Opinion | Vladimir Kara-Murza: “My first thought was that I was going to be led out to be executed”

“Welcome to freedom,” were the first words from Jens Plötner, the German chancellor’s national security adviser, who greeted us in the terminal. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any more surreal, a diplomat from the U.S. Embassy approached me with a cellphone and told me that the president of the United States was on the line. Alongside him, I heard the voices of my wife and children whom I had been forbidden from calling from prison for more than two years.

I don’t have the words, in any language, to describe the feeling.

The exchange in Ankara was historic in many ways.

Read the full opinion here.