Veteran human rights lawyer released in swap says Russia is moving towards Stalinist era
Berlin: Oleg Orlov, a human rights activist since the 1980s, believed Russia had turned a corner when the Soviet Union collapsed and a democratically elected president became the leader.
But then Vladimir Putin came to power, crushing dissent and launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Eventually, the 71-year-old Orlov was imprisoned for his opposition to the war. Released last week in the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, he was forced into exile – like the Soviet dissidents of his youth.
In an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin on Thursday, Orlov decried the scale and severity of repression under Putin, with people being jailed for criticizing the authorities, something not seen since the days of dictator Joseph Stalin.
And he's vowing to continue his work to free more political prisoners in Russia and put their names in the spotlight.
“We're moving somewhere in the Stalin era,” said Orlov, who sometimes showed signs of fatigue 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 anti-war articles. When he was unexpectedly moved last month from a prison in central Russia that 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 told the AP.
First, he was asked to write a request for forgiveness addressed to Putin – which he categorically refused. A few days later, he was put into a van and, to his surprise, taken to an airport in Samara and flown to Moscow.
“To find yourself on a plane, among free people, straight from prison – a very strange feeling,” Orlov said.
After three more days in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo prison, he was kept in isolation in a cell, where he wrote a complaint saying he was denied access to his lawyer. Then, he was shown a document stating that he had been pardoned. He was again put on a plane, this time out of Russia, with other freed dissidents, and received in Germany by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He smiled as he saw familiar faces on the bus to the airport – artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, jailed for a minor anti-war protest, opposition politician Andrei Pivovarov and others.
“So when the state security operative was announcing (on the bus) that it was a swap, we already understood very well,” he said.
While being held in Lefortovo, however, Orlov suspected that another criminal case was being prepared against him. As for what the authorities might charge, he said, “they'll find (one) without a problem.”
“The oppressive machine … is set in motion and it runs itself,” said the veteran human rights lawyer. “The machine works to sustain itself and can only intensify the repression, making them harder.”
Memorial, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights group co-founded by Orlov, says more than 760 political prisoners are in prison in Russia. Another major rights group, OVD-Info, said more than 1,300 are currently in prison in politically motivated cases.
Some of them face isolation without access to lawyers or doctors, often at the behest of authorities, Orlov said.
Opposition politicians, such as the late Alexei Navalny or the recently replaced Vladimir Kara-Murza, were kept in such isolation in remote penal colonies, and their health deteriorated.
“My experience was much easier than most,” Orlov said. Prison officials “never used absolute iniquity toward me,” he said, adding, “I was never singled out from the crowd.”
Still, it's important to support the growing number of those indicted on political grounds, he said, from putting their plight in the headlines to sending them letters, and care packages, and helping their families.
In prison, “there's always this feeling of concern for your family. If you know that your family is going to be all right, it really helps to feel at peace. And that's the most important thing in prison – not to be depressed and feel peace of mind,” said Orlov. .
In the harrowing days since beginning his new life in exile that 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 the memorial, and says there are still things advocates outside Russia can do, such as maintaining a database of political prisoners and coordinating support for those in prison.
A complete halt to repression, however, will only happen after Putin's “repressive, terrorist regime” ceases to exist, he says.
