President Pavel welcomes US-Russian prisoner swap as “positive signal”

Czech President Petr Pavel has welcomed the large-scale prisoner swap between Russia and the US in which 24 prisoners were released in total.  Mr. Pavel said the agreement was a positive signal that showed that the two countries were still able to communicate.

Among those released from Russian prisons was Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist who lived in the Czech Republic and worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Kurmasheva, a mother of two, was detained by the Russian authorities on a visit to her parents last October and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail for failing to register as a foreign agent.

In addition, Russian authorities reportedly freed activists and other regime critics such as Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and Sasha Skochilenko.