‘This is happiness’ – Freed Russian political prisoner reunites with wife he married behind bars

Andrey Pivovarov adjusts to life outside a penal colony after his release in one of the biggest prisoner exchanges last week

Tatiana Usmanova burst into tears when Andrey Pivovarov, her husband, called her and said he had been included in the Russian prisoner exchange.
Ms Usmanova was at her home in Moscow, where she has lived throughout her husband’s last three years serving in a Russian penal colony. When she heard the news, she immediately booked flights to Turkey and then to Germany, chasing after her husband as he was transported to freedom.
Mr Pivovarov, 42, is the head of the Russian opposition group Open Russia, outlawed since 2021. He was detained in 2021 for leading the pro-democracy group, and in 2022, was sentenced to four years in prison.
But on Friday, he was one of Russia’s high-profile prisoners involved in the largest exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Twenty-four prisoners were involved in the exchange, with 16 freed from Vladimir Putin’s prisons in an extraordinary swap with Joe Biden and European allies.
Through glances at one another in court hearings and meetings for a few short moments, Mr Pivovarov and Ms Usmanova kept their relationship alive, and last summer, they were married – in prison.
She was allowed to spend three days living in the penal colony he was sent to in May of this year.
“I had to fit it in between my cleaning [job],” Mr Pivovarov told The Telegraph in one of the first interviews given by a former prisoner involved in the exchange.
“During my cleaning, I took a mop. They took me to the wedding, I came back, and there was still time for cleaning.”
Friday was the first time Mr Pivovarov had seen his wife since May. Nearly a week before his release, Ms Usmanova was told that her husband was missing from his prison, she was afraid that her husband may have been killed and that she might never see him again.
The prisoner swap was shrouded in secrecy – even the inmates were left in the dark. 
On Wednesday, Mr Pivovarov was awoken by the head of the penal colony and told he was leaving. After eating breakfast and collecting his personal belongings in a box, he asked: “Where are we going?” 
He was in Gorelovo, near St Petersburg, and said: “I thought we were going to Petersburg, to the pretrial detention centre.”
As he was rounded up, he saw one name written on a piece of paper held by an FSB agent: Alexandra Skochilenko, the Russian artist and political prisoner who was also part of the exchange.
“That was when I realised that something good was coming, because Sasha and I can’t be tried in the same case,” he said.
Mr Pivovarov was put on a bus travelling to St Petersburg and spent the night in a jail cell. 
On Thursday morning, he was taken to Moscow. There, Mr Pivovarov saw some of his first glimpses of Russia since the summer of 2022, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began.
There was a propaganda advertisement with the letter Z, the sign attributed to the Russian military, and the agents who drove Mr Pivovarov began to recount stories of their time as soldiers in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, the epicentre of the war.
“We are all fighters here. We are from Donbas,” the agents told Mr Pivovarov as they bragged about their military achievements.
During his transportation, Mr Pivovarov briefly saw Paul Wheelan, the former US marine who was also part of the exchange. Then, the prisoners were taken to an airbase in Moscow, and Mr Pivovarov was assigned an FSB agent to travel by plane with. ‌
Over the next few hours, Mr Pivovarov travelled from Russia to Turkey and then to Germany. Upon leaving Russia, he said he felt “such a certain sadness. Because I understood that I would not see Russia so soon. But I am sure that I will see it again”.
As he was taken to Ankara, Turkey, Mr Pivovarov learned that he was part of the prisoner exchange. 
At the airbase in the Turkish capital, Mr Pivovarov said that he and the rest of the political prisoners caught glimpses of the Russians that the West had exchanged from the windows of a bus, one of which was Vadim Krasikov, a convicted murderer, and another was perceived spy Pablo González.
“We didn’t fully understand [ the exchange] yet, we understood that it was Krasikov, well, but we didn’t understand what it was,” he added.
When Mr Pivovarov was told he was part of the prisoner exchange, he called Ms Usmanova and let her know he was free.
“When he called me, it was in the middle of the day. He called me, and he said that everything was fine. I’m in Turkey, and we’re flying to Germany. We will be there in a few hours. Only then I understood that it was really happening.
“I was crying when I saw his name on the lists of political prisoners who are supposed to be released. You see this list, but it’s not official list. And you don’t see his photo. You don’t see the video with him. It’s just not the rumour, but someone thinks so,” she added.
“I want people to understand that he’s a real fighter. I want people to know that Russia is not Putin. Russia is the brave people, like my husband, who are fighting for the freedom of Russian people, who are against the war and who are looking for the truth.” she added.
On Friday at the conference, finally together and free again the couple exchanged kisses. Mr Pivovarov said that when he saw Ms Usmanova, he was filled with “delight”. 
“This is happiness,” he said. “Because we met on dates when they were given, it was great, but, of course, it was not enough. Well, we have a lot of plans ahead,” which includes holding a proper wedding ceremony, a redo that can separate memories of their union from the reminder of Mr Pivovarov’s unjust prison sentence.
“I think that we will organise some other event, a correct task because we are building something more pleasant. These are good events. That we can change reality,” said Mr Pivovarov.
Speaking on his freedom, Mr Pivovarov said: “On the one hand, I was stunned. On the other hand, I was devastated. 
“In Russia, you perceive it as a release. But here you understand that you’ve simply found yourself at point zero,” meaning that he has to start his life over again in a foreign country far from his life in Russia.
“Maybe even minus. So now you have to solve some everyday issues. And you understand that this is a new situation in which you all, many people, have been living for two years. This is news to me.”