Germany justice minister warns against travel to Russia amidst prisoner exchange and human rights concerns

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann told a local magazine on Tuesday that he advises Germans against travelling to Russia, stressing that no one has been safe in Russia for a long time. Buschmann’s comments came in the wake of a recent prisoner exchange with Russia, in which Germany played a pivotal role. The complex negotiations concluded on Thursday and resulted in the release of 16 prisoners to Western countries in exchange for eight prisoners transferred to Russia.

During the prisoner exchange with Russia, Buschmann said he had doubts until the very end about whether the Russian side would honor the agreement. In an interview with Stern magazine, Buschmann revealed that the uncertainty persisted even after the plane carrying the released prisoners landed in Cologne/Bonn, Germany. Buschmann confided that his greatest fear was the possibility that Russia would poison the prisoners before their departure. However, he expressed relief that, based on current information, there is no reason to believe Russia would breach the agreement.

The aforementioned prisoner exchange centred on Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen serving a sentence in Germany for a 2019 assassination in Berlin. In 2022, Russia proposed trading American detainees for Krasikov, but US officials initially dismissed the idea, as Krasikov was not under their jurisdiction. The possibility of such a swap resurfaced when the Russian president mentioned it during an interview with a prominent American media personality.

For Germany, the decision to release Krasikov carried significant political implications. Chancellor Olaf Scholz emphasized the ethical and diplomatic challenges of freeing a convicted murderer who had been sentenced to life imprisonment after a relatively short time in custody. Nonetheless, Scholz justified the decision to turn Krasikov over to Russia by balancing the state’s interest in enforcing the sentence with the imperative to safeguard the freedom and health of, in some cases, innocent people detained in Russia. In that sense, Michael Roth, head of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, expressed the government’s stance on social media, suggesting that humanitarian considerations sometimes require negotiating with disagreeable parties. The exchange required significant compromises from Germany, a fact acknowledged by US President Joe Biden, who expressed deep appreciation for Chancellor Scholz’s role in the process.

Moreover, in his interview with Stern magazine, Minister Buschmann also highlighted the dangerous situation for journalists in Russia under Vladimir Putin’s regime. Noting that nearly 40 journalists have been killed and countless others arbitrarily detained, he emphasized that safety in Russia was compromised long before the recent prisoner exchange.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented numerous abuses by Russian forces against both Ukrainian and foreign journalists since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These abuses range from lethal shootings to arrests and disappearances. In the past two years alone, more than a hundred journalists have been killed, eleven of them in the line of duty. Many have been injured or disappeared, while others have seen their newsrooms destroyed by bombs. In Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, independent local media have been effectively silenced.

The human rights situation in Russia and its occupied territories is equally dire. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, numerous actions by Russian forces could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. Within Russia, the government has intensified its crackdown on dissent, using new laws to stifle free speech, civic activism, independent journalism, and political opposition to silence any criticism of the war or the government.

Amnesty International confirms these problems, noting that Russia continues to allow its forces to commit war crimes with impunity. Domestically, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association are severely restricted, and government critics face arbitrary prosecution, violent attacks, and lengthy prison sentences. Broad anti-terrorism and anti-extremism laws are used against opposition groups, critics, and lawyers. Widespread torture in detention goes unpunished, and trials, especially of political cases, are often unfair. In addition, new laws target the LGBT community and opposition leaders, and Russia’s refusal to cooperate with international human rights institutions exacerbates the dire situation.