It is inevitable that we will feel less than relieved, if not happy, after the release last week of the Pulitzer Prize-winning British journalist and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza. He spent nearly two years in prison in Russia until he was freed in a prisoner swap between Russia and the United States. It was the most dramatic and also the most intense since the days of the Cold War. I say intense because this alleged deal could have only represented the release and departure of opposition leader Alexei Navalny from Russia, a possibility that Russia initially ruled out and which has delayed the process. Here’s why solution The Kremlin’s decision to liquidate Navalny was a mistake.
I have spoken of the relief of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s freedom, which other former prisoners are also enjoying at this time. I applaud the fact that none of them are locked in a cell and threatened anymore. I do not go into names, nor distinguish their paths and trajectories, although I do not deny that I feel distant from a few. But there is one, whose path I cannot help but feel close to, and that is the Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo Gonzalez, whose real name is Pavel Rubtsov. I supported Pablo during his imprisonment in Poland, signing some statements and rejecting the stories published by other media and my fellow journalists. I always believed that Pablo was a conciliatory victim of the tug of war by the political police in Poland following the Russian attack on Ukraine. I did not trust the Polish far-right nationalists at all, who bear great similarities to the Russian ultras: the problem between Kaczynski and Putin is not an ideology, but a border and a historical resentment. Thus I normalized Pablo Gonzalez’s status as a victim while believing that the Polish ultras wanted to make him pay for his Russian origins.
I could not imagine Pablo Gonzalez on the same flight as other prisoners of Russian origin, neither landing in Moscow nor being received with honors by Putin. The Russian dictator was comfortable with those he called patriots, and distinguished them from those who arrived in Washington, whom he called spies and traitors. I do not appreciate or judge the emotions, the identity—the identities—or the sense of belonging of someone who has traveled the world as a reporter and a transmitter of records. It is easy and risky to be swept up in assumptions and suspicions, to let the signs pass and to disregard the presumption of innocence.
The information I have is that Pablo Gonzalez may have been recruited by Russian military intelligence, and that at the time he was arrested by Polish agents, just hours after the attack in Ukraine, he could have been following the lead. From the Russian opposition, Zhanna Nemtsova, a mainstay of the Nemtsov Foundation. Zhanna Nemtsova’s father was Boris Nemtsov, the liberal anti-Putin leader who was assassinated outside the Kremlin in February 2015. I have interviewed Boris Nemtsov several times in Nizhny Novgorod, when he was its governor, and in Moscow, as an opposition leader. Was Pablo Gonzalez really following in the footsteps of the daughter of the opposition leader Putin eliminated?
I insist on not making hasty accusations, or, above all, underestimating the importance of the presumption of innocence. However, I believe that Pablo Gonzalez’s body, so far, was clearly scattered after he got off the plane and stood, also clearly, a few meters away from Putin.
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