Russian prisoner exchange comes at the cost of releasing 'serious threat to the West', says Alexander Litvinenko's widow
3 August 2024, 14:29
Anti-Putin campaigner and widow of Alexander Litvinenko, Marina Litvinenko, has praised the prisoner swap between Russia and the West, but warned that freedom has come at the cost of releasing "killers and spies" back to the Kremlin.
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Ms Litvinenko - whose husband was a former FSB agent turned defector who was poisoned and killed by the Russians in 2006 - told LBC's Paul Brand that she was "very happy" that the prisoners were "no more in danger".
She said she was particularly pleased following the death of Alexy Navalny, a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, who died at a Russian penal colony, suspected to be killed under Kremlin orders.
Ms Litvinenko said many of the now released prisoners could have been in the same danger as Navalny if they were not released.
But the widow warned that those released by the West to Russia in the prisoner exchange were "not political prisoners" but "killers and spies".
Read More: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released in prisoner swap between US and Russia
She said we should not think of the Russians as spies in an "old James Bond movie" but instead as a "real serious threat to people in the West".
Among the eight returning to Moscow was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen fighter in a Berlin park. German judges said the murder was carried out on orders from Russian authorities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that Krasikov is an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB - a fact reported in the West even as Moscow denied any state involvement.
He also said Krasikov once served in the FSB's special Alpha unit, along with some of Mr Putin's bodyguards.
Mr Peskov also confirmed that the couple released in Slovenia - Artem Dultsov and Anna Dultsova - were undercover intelligence officers commonly known as "illegals".
Posing as Argentine expats, they used Ljubljana as their base since 2017 to relay Moscow's orders to other sleeper agents and were arrested on espionage charges in 2022.
Their two children joined them as they flew to Moscow via Ankara, Turkey, where the mass exchange took place.
It comes as two British nationals were part of the swap: Vladimir Kara-Murza and Paul Whelan.
Mr Whelan, a corporate security executive with joint British nationality from Michigan, has been jailed since 2018 on espionage charges he and Washington have denied.
Also freed was Mr Kara-Murza, who has joint Russian and British nationality and is a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who was serving 25 years on charges of treason – widely seen as politically motivated.
Mr Whelan was designated as wrongfully detained following his arrest in December 2018 after he had travelled to Russia for a wedding. He was serving a 16-year sentence.
Ms Litvinenko said she "absolutely" wanted to speak to some of the released Russian prisoners when it was suitable.
"I'm sure I will talk to Vladimir Kara-Murza one day, maybe not soon. But for Vladimir maybe there is not a dilemma because he has family in the United States and is a British citizen.
"But for other people, it will be not easy," she said.
She told the prisoners to take their "second chance to live" and "live their life".
