Veteran human rights advocate freed in exchange says Russia is sliding back towards Stalinist times
BERLIN: A human rights activist since the 1980s, Oleg Orlov believed Russia had turned a corner when the Soviet Union collapsed and a democratically elected president became its leader.
But then Vladimir Putin took power, crushed dissent and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Finally, the 71-year-old Orlov himself was thrown into prison for opposing the war. Freed last week in the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, he was forced into exile – just like the Soviet dissidents of his youth.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday in Berlin, Orlov decried the scale and severity of repression under Putin, with people jailed for merely criticizing the authorities, something not seen since the days of dictator Josef Stalin.
And he promises to continue his work to free the many political prisoners in Russia and keep their names in the spotlight.
“We're slipping somewhere into the time of Stalin,” said Orlov, who showed signs of weariness at times from a hectic schedule of media interviews in the week since his release.
He was sentenced to 2½ years in prison in February for writing an anti-war article. When he was unexpectedly moved from a prison in central Russia last month in what eventually led to the Aug. 1 prisoner swap, he was waiting to be transferred to a penal colony after losing an appeal.
The move came as a complete surprise, he tells AP.
First, he was told to write a request for clemency addressed to Putin – something he said he adamantly refused. Days later, he was put in a van and, to his surprise, driven to an airport in Samara and flown to Moscow.
“To be on a plane, among free people, straight from a prison – a very strange feeling,” Orlov said.
Another three days followed in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo prison, isolated in his cell, where he wrote a complaint that he was denied access to his lawyer. Then he was shown a document stating that he had been pardoned. He was put on a plane again, this time outside Russia, along with other freed dissidents, and greeted in Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He broke into a smile as he recalled seeing familiar faces on the bus to the airport – artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, jailed for a small anti-war protest, opposition politician Andrei Pivovarov and others.
“So when a government security agent announced (on the bus) that it was a switch, we already understood that very well,” he said.
But while he was being held in Lefortovo, Orlov suspected that another criminal case was being prepared against him. As for what charges authorities might bring, he said, “They would find (one) no problem.”
“The repressive machine … has been set in motion and it is going by itself,” said the veteran human rights advocate. “The machine works to maintain itself and can only intensify the oppressions, make them harder.”
Memorial, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights group Orlov co-founded, says more than 760 political prisoners remain imprisoned in Russia. Another prominent rights group, OVD-Info, says over 1,300 are currently imprisoned in politically motivated cases.
Some of them face solitary confinement, without access to lawyers or doctors, often on the orders of authorities, Orlov said.
Opposition politicians, such as the late Alexei Navalny or recently replaced Vladimir Kara-Murza, were kept in such isolated conditions in remote penal colonies, and their health deteriorated.
“My experience was much easier than a lot of people's,” Orlov said. Prison officials “never exercised complete lawlessness against me,” he added, “I was not singled out from the crowd.”
Still, it's important to support the growing number of people facing political charges, he said, from keeping their plight in the headlines to sending them letters and care packages and helping their families.
In prison, “there's always this sense of concern for your family. Knowing that your family is going to be okay really helps to feel at peace. And in prison, that's the most important thing – not to despair and feel peace of mind, Orlov said.
In the difficult days since he began his new life in exile he never sought, Orlov has had little time to process his newfound freedom, and he has yet to reunite with his wife.
But he is determined to continue his work with Memorial, saying there are things advocates can still do outside Russia, such as maintaining the database of political prisoners and coordinating aid for those behind bars
However, stopping the repression altogether will only happen when Putin's “repressive, terrorist regime” ceases to exist, he says.
