The prisoners released in the trade with Russia on Thursday have landed on the airport in the German metropolis of Cologne, the place Chancellor Olaf Scholz acquired them personallyTwo planes have arrived in the Central European nation tonight from Ankara with Most of the 16 prisoners released on boardOnly a small group of the newly exchanged flew on to the US.
Several dozen individuals have been ready across the airport to satisfy with political prisoners exchanged on the gates of Cologne airport.
The German chancellor interrupted his vacation to welcome the freed prisoners. “It is a particular second for me,” he stated to the media on the airfield.
“It’s been very thrilling, many individuals did not anticipate it to occur now,” he added.
The give up of the Russian agent
Scholz handed over Russian agent Vadim Krasikov to Russia on the request of the United States. sentenced on the finish of 2022 to life imprisonment by a German court docket after murdering a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent in a Berlin park in 2019, a “troublesome” determination, he admitted.
US President Joe Biden wished to safe the discharge of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, however the Kremlin insisted that Germany needed to embody Krasikov in order to finish the swap, one thing Scholz had initially rejected.
Scholz thanked different European international locations, akin to Slovenia and Norway, for his or her contribution to releasing the prisoners, and pressured that the trade had additional deepened the friendship between Germany and the US.
He stated it was the “right determination” at hand over Krasikov to the Kremlin. “And if there was any doubt, one loses it after talking with those that at the moment are free,” he defined.
“We are a society characterised by its humanism, by the concept of particular person freedom and democracy, and the truth that those that must concern for his or her lives for having defended democracy and freedom can even depend on the safety of others is a part of our picture as a democratic and humanist society,” he pressured.
Prisoners released by Russia
Among the released prisoners who landed in Cologne options German citizen Rico Kriegerpardoned on Tuesday by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko after having been sentenced to loss of life in Belarus for, amongst different issues, terrorist offences, together with 4 different nationals.
According to List of pardons by Russian President Vladimir Putinthe kinfolk of these released and the video of the trade released by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the opposite 4 nationals exchanged are the German-Russian Kevin Lik and Demuri Voronin, and the Germans German Moyzhe and Patrick Schöbel.
They additionally arrived in Germany septuagenarian activist Oleg Orlov, chief of Memorialthe organisation that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and different human rights activists and opponents of the warfare, together with key figures in the community of the late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny.
They have been additionally released Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin and former Washington Post columnist and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, a British-Russian citizen, who will transfer to the United States.
“I want all the very best to those that have now come right here. May their well being get better and should they discover a perspective. And I want those that at this time stay in Russian prisons and concern for his or her freedom, for his or her lives and their well being, that they too discover a solution to regain their freedom“, Scholz emphasised.
“In any case, we’ll proceed to defend democracy and freedom, we owe it to ourselves as a rustic, as a nation,” he concluded his assertion.
