President Biden delivers remarks on the prisoner swap with Russia from the State Dining Room of the White House on Thursday, with several family members of freed hostages in attendance. Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post

Ilya Yashin, one of the Russian political prisoners freed in Thursday’s historic swap, said he was taken out of Russia against his will and wanted to stay in the country.

Before Thursday’s exchange, Yashin had publicly stated that he did not want to be freed because life in exile would effectively end his political opposition work inside the country.

“This was my conscious position. I refused to leave Russia under the threat of arrest, recognizing myself as a Russian politician, a patriot,” Yashin said, at a news conference in Bonn, Germany, on Friday, where he appeared with others who were released. “I understood my imprisonment not only as an antiwar struggle but also as a fight for my right to live in my country, to engage in independent politics there.”

Yashin said that a few days before the swap, the prison warden visited him and asked him to sign a request for pardon addressed to President Vladimir Putin, which Yashin and several others, including dissident Washington Post Opinions contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza, refused to do.

Yashin said he ruled out asking Putin for anything because he considers him “a war criminal.”

“When it became clear that an exchange was taking place, I wrote a statement to the head of the pretrial detention center citing that the expulsion of Russian citizens without their consent is not permitted,” Yashin added, pulling out a piece of paper addressed to authorities in the Lefortovo detention center, where he was held until he and other prisoners were put on a flight to Turkey.

“I consider this event as an illegal expulsion from Russia against my will. More than anything, I want to return home,” Yashin said, adding that Russian authorities did not give the prisoners a choice to refuse their extradition.

Yashin said he went along with the swap out of concern that the exchange would be canceled altogether, jeopardizing the freedom of other prisoners.

“It’s an absolute mockery when a person who says, ‘I’m not going anywhere from my country,’ in violation of all laws … is taken and thrown out of the country,” he said. “And those people who really should be freed, who have serious health problems, who could die in prison, they are left and continue to be tortured. It’s unbearable.”