Prisoners in Russia go missing
Over the past few days, lawyers and relatives of a number of well-known political prisoners in Russia have been informed that the prisoners are no longer in the jails where they had been held up to now. Their current location is unknown. The missing prisoners include 18-year-old German student Kevin Lick, the artist Sasha Skochilenko, the human rights activist Oleg Orlov and politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
In the footsteps of Belarus
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung raises the alarm:
“The Kremlin's repression machine is taking the next step in the direction of complete isolation of its enemies. This follows in the footsteps of Belarus where there has been no sign of a number of political prisoners for more than a year and nobody knows whether they are even alive. But just because there is no news about the prisoners of the dictators of Moscow and Minsk, it does not mean we should forget them in the free part of Europe.”
Hope for prisoner exchange with the West
In a Telegram post picked up by Echo, human rights activist Alyona Popova voices concern but also hope:
“'Missing' is a well-known phenomenon in the Russian penal system. ... But [so many] people at the same time, and all high-profile political cases? This has never happened before. People are writing about the possibility of an exchange, which seems obvious. After the conviction of Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petrichuk, [Nobel Peace Prize winner] Dmitry Muratov turned to Western leaders with a request for an exchange involving Russian political prisoners and opponents of the war. This is the right path. I want to believe with all my heart that these rumours are true and that these people will be freed. We all know that Russian penal colonies are hell.”