Arrested at 17 for High Treason, Freed at 19 In a Historic Prisoner Swap
An interview with Kevin Lick, the Russian-German dual national who was exchanged alongside Russian opposition leaders after spending over a year in a Russian jail.
Editor’s Note:
Hello there! I’m Aron Ouzilevski, the newest member of DOXA’s intrepid team, here to bring you all things Russia—in English. I’ll be your weekly guide to exclusive translations, original features, and thought-provoking opinion pieces from contributors around the world.
For our first piece, we’re featuring an interview with Kevin Lick—a Russian-German activist convicted of high treason in Russia at just 17 and exchanged last August in a historic prisoner swap.
Spending over a year in freezing prison cells, surrounded by hostile cellmates and sleeping in full winter clothing, could make anyone cynical. But Lick remains optimistic. He speaks out on politics, advocates for Russian political prisoners, plans to study law, and has marched alongside opposition figures—including Ilya Yashin and Alexei Navalny’s widow—in Russian diaspora protests. Having seen the light at the end of the tunnel firsthand, he’s certain it will one day reach Russia too. Enjoy!
By Aron Ouzilevski
Pushing his glasses up his nose, 19-year-old Kevin Lick—6 foot 4, with sharp cheekbones and baby-like skin—told me meekly how he struggled to make friends at his German school. His classmates, he said, do not understand “what it means to be a political prisoner.”
On August 1, 2024, a prisoner swap of historic proportions took place in Ankara. In exchange for a group of Russian spies and contract killers—arrested in Germany, the U.S., Brazil, and Slovenia—Moscow released several journalists, opposition figures, and activists. Among them were the American Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, opposition leaders Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, and activist Aleksandra Skochilenko, who was facing a 7-year prison sentence for replacing supermarket price tags with anti war slogans in 2022.
But one imposingly tall, lanky figure, spotted among the released hostages, was less familiar to international observers: Kevin Lick, the 18-year-old Russian-German dual citizen.
Lick had been arrested in 2023 at just 17, making him the youngest person in modern Russia to be convicted of treason. His alleged crime, according to the perfunctory, fast-tracked case against him, was photographing military equipment with the intent to pass the images to German intelligence. In reality, his bedroom window in Russia overlooked a military base, where he observed daily, how the number of tanks and troops swelled since the start of the full-scale invasion. He admitted to taking the photos—what teenager wouldn’t?—but vehemently denied all espionage accusations, and states that he was never in contact with German intelligence.
He remains convinced that he was taken as a hostage. Moscow had made no secret of its efforts to secure the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian operative who was imprisoned in Germany for carrying out a contract killing in broad daylight in Berlin. The Kremlin needed a German citizen for its exchange pool, and Lick believes he was used as a bargaining chip in a larger geopolitical game.
Lick spoke with me over a Zoom call, his Russian marked by an ever-so faint German accent, from his apartment in a town in the central part of Germany, where he lives with his mother and stepfather and is finishing school to make up for the two years lost in prison. In our conversation below, we speak of his time behind bars, his relationships with fellow inmates, his views on German and Russian politics, and his deeper musings on guilt and complicity, crime and punishment.
AO: Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? What was the more dominant cultural influence in your upbringing—German or Russian?
KL: I was born in a small German town where I lived until I was 12. My father, a Volga German—a descendant of ethnic Germans who settled in the Russian Empire along the Volga River and later repatriated to Germany after the Soviet collapse—and my mother—an ethnic Russian—met in Russia before moving to Germany. My parents separated when I was very young, and eventually my mom decided she wanted to move back to her hometown of Maykop, in the North Caucasus. The town was small, some 160,000 inhabitants, close to the mountains.
AO: It’s often difficult for people at such an age to move countries. What was it like for you?
KL: I was excited for the new experience, although my Russian was basically nonexistent. But I quickly learned it with a tutor. The problem wasn’t with the schooling, it was with peers and the teachers. They would tease me for my German accent. Sometimes, they would call me a “fascist,” a “nazi” for my German background. One time, a teacher yelled “this is no place for Germans!” at me. I guess I was something of a spectacle, it’s a small provincial town, it doesn’t happen everyday that a German boy arrives there. [Editor’s note: In the years before the invasion, Russian state propaganda increasingly weaponized WWII victory narratives, using "fascist" and "Nazi" as slurs—often aimed at Ukrainians.]
AO: In 2021, you replaced a portrait of Vladimir Putin with one of Alexei Navalny in your classroom—an act you later learned, during FSB [Federal Security Services] questioning, had put you on the authorities' radar. When did you become politicized, and what drove this shift at such a young age?
KV: For much of my childhood, I believed Putin was the best president. But the bullying at school and the constant propaganda on TV made me start questioning my surroundings. I was confused about why I was called a fascist—I didn’t even know what the word meant. Then came the 2018 presidential election. My mom, who worked in the public sector, would come home and tell me how she and her colleagues were bused to polling stations and forced to vote for Putin or risk losing their jobs. Around the same time, I discovered Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption work on YouTube, and that was when I began to see our political reality more clearly.
AO: Did your opinions make you stand out among your classmates?
KV: They were all apolitical, and I was definitely the black sheep. The teachers were suspicious of me. I remember once taking a photo of our school's uninsulated windows and posting it on a local town forum. I didn’t include my name, but the school administration immediately suspected me and called me in for disciplinary talks. But my question to them was—should schoolchildren have to sit in classrooms wrapped in their winter jackets in the dead of winter?
AO: And how did you react when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began?
KL: Well, before that, I already suspected that there would be a war because discussions on this topic had started back in December 2021 [there was a buildup of Russian military on the Ukrainian border]. Moreover, I lived near a military base, and I saw, with my own eyes, how military vehicles, tanks and soldiers were moving in bulk. At first, I thought all of this movement was just for military exercises, although, in my 5 years of living there, I had never seen anything of the scale.
On the morning of the invasion, my mother was in shock—she had friends in Ukraine. My classmates barely spoke about it, and unlike in Russia’s major cities, there were no anti-war protests. The very next day, if I remember correctly, we had a lecture claiming that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” [Editor’s note: This propagandistic narrative is often used by the Russian state to undermine Ukrainian nationhood and self-determination.]
AO: Repressions and surveillance ramped up after the invasion. Did you feel any personal danger while living in Russia at that time?
KL: No, I didn’t feel any danger. Although the invasion had already begun, I wasn’t breaking any laws. Cases of citizens being arrested on political grounds were increasing— and they included teenagers, but I never imagined the authorities would go after me.
AO: Can you talk about the year leading up to your arrest? What were you and your mother’s plans and thoughts?
KL: My mother wanted to leave—she felt unsettled in Russia after the war began. I, however, was thriving in school, winning nationwide academic competitions, or “Olympiads,” and aiming for a top-tier university in Moscow. Eventually, she convinced me to move back to Germany. In September 2022, we traveled to Moscow to sort out our documents at the German embassy. I later learned that a special counterintelligence unit—the same one Evan Gershkovich [the WSJ reporter part of the same prisoner swap] reported on—had surveilled our entire trip. Officers even showed us photos, taken from multiple angles, of us walking around the city.
AO: Can you talk about the moment of the arrest?
KL: In late January 2023, just days before our planned departure, we went to a military recruitment center to request my removal from the conscription database. We had already submitted our emigration documents [all Russian men must complete mandatory military service at 18], but because the government had declared mobilization a few months earlier [calling up previously exempt conscripts], we worried we’d face issues at the border. So we filled out the paperwork and thought we were in the clear.
The next day, though, my mother was called back to the recruitment center. As she was leaving, police officers were waiting outside. They immediately detained her for "disorderly conduct," and she spent 10 days in detention before being released. Later, I found out that the counterintelligence unit had intercepted our documents, ordered the recruitment center to summon my mother, and coordinated with local authorities to have her detained—deliberately stalling our departure.
AO: After your mother was detained, did it immediately become clear that something was wrong?
KL: We had a feeling something was off… but we never could have imagined what happened next.
As soon as my mother was released, we tried to leave the country the very next day. First, we took a five-hour train to the nearest airport, in Adler, a city on the coast of the Black Sea. When we arrived, we checked into a hotel, left our luggage, and went out to get something to eat—we were exhausted after all the travel.
We were wandering through a market [Kevin shows me the photos] when a hooded, masked man started filming us. Seconds later, a small bus pulled up, and a group of FSB officers stepped out. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see a federal officer flashing his badge. “You’re under investigation for high treason,” he said.
My mother was stunned. At first, she didn’t understand and tried to tell the officers it was a mistake. I just stood there, silent. Then they took us back to our apartment, searched through our belongings while filming everything, and eventually, the head of an FSB unit arrived.
It’s hard to describe how I felt. It was really hard. There was just this overwhelming sense of inevitability.
AO: Just to get the record straight for our readers, what was their accusation?
KL: They accused me of photographing military equipment with the intent to pass the images to German intelligence. I had taken photos, but only from my window—there was a military base right below! I took them out of curiosity, to have as a historical record. Suddenly, all this equipment appeared outside my window, and I had never seen anything like it before.
After searching our home, they took me to a local FSB office, where an appointed lawyer was already waiting. He immediately told me to sign a confession stating that I had planned to deliver the photos to the German government. I knew they would pressure my mother, and to spare her further agony, I signed it. The confession claimed my actions were “against the politics of the Russian Federation in carrying out its Special Military Operation” [the Kremlin’s euphemism for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine].
They contradicted themselves at every step. In one trial, they claimed I was already in contact with German federal agents; in the final ruling, they stated I had only been “planning” to do so. In the end, they sentenced me to four years—a significantly reduced term for a treason charge—citing my academic achievements and cooperation in the investigation. I now realize I was merely part of the exchange fund [a Russian term for detainees, often political prisoners, held as bargaining chips in diplomatic or political negotiations].
AO: Can you share as much as you're comfortable with about your time in prison?
KV: For the first two days, they put me in a filthy, dilapidated cell—everything was dirty, the faucet leaked, and there were bars on the wall as if for a window, but no window behind them. It was freezing. I had to sleep in my winter jacket, boots, and hat, and they took away the plaid blanket my mother had sent me, replacing it with a thin utility blanket. Then I was placed in solitary confinement, where I spent two months alone in a cell with two beds.
When I turned 18, they transferred me to an [adult] prison in the Republic of Adygea.
For the first week there, one cellmate—who had heard about my case because we had the same lawyer—turned the other cellmates against me. They tied my hands, beat me, and called me a German spy. They interrogated me for reasons I still don’t understand, and tried to ask me who I was taking the photos for. Eventually, I was removed from that cell and placed elsewhere.
Later, when I was transferred to a prison in Krasnodar—a 3,000-kilometer train ride—they crammed me and about 30 other inmates into a container-cell with just 14 beds. For two weeks, we took turns sleeping, sharing the limited space.
In another prison, in Volgograd, our unit had no running water. Each morning, we had to leave our cells in turns to haul buckets of water up several flights of stairs. These were the kinds of hardships we faced.
AO: For someone your age, this must have been a heavy burden, a significant psychological toll. Yet reports from your time in prison mention that you kept your spirits up, trying to reassure your mother. How did you cope emotionally and psychologically?
KV: Naturally, it was a tremendous challenge, a heavy strain on the psyche. Especially at an age when, even then, adolescence can already feel like a breaking point. But the first thing I did was accept the situation. I understood that I had no control over it and couldn’t influence the outcome. They forced me to confess, so there was nothing I could do.
AO: How did you pass the time in prison?
KL: At first, I read fiction. Then I asked my mother to send me textbooks. I didn’t want to fall behind on my schooling, so I started studying algebra, geometry, biology, and chemistry.
AO: Beyond that first traumatic encounter, can you describe your relationship with various inmates? Was it ever scary for you to be surrounded by real criminals?
KV: For part of the first stretch, I was with political prisoners, so there was a mutual understanding. I encountered the most criminals in the penal colony, where I served just before the exchange. As soon as I arrived, the guards confiscated all 20 of my textbooks.
Word about my case spread quickly throughout the colony, and all the inmates were deeply curious. I was the only person in the colony convicted of high treason. Because I was young, they placed me in the less severe, “general regime,” alongside robbers, crooks, con artists, and drug users.
I was used to being around such people—but I knew they had committed crimes and were serving their punishment. I was in no way a criminal like them.
For the most part, I was treated well. They understood my situation. In fact, all of the inmates I encountered—from thieves to murderers—knew the charges against me were bogus. They would laugh when I told them I was accused of collaborating with German intelligence. Who would believe that a spy could be so young? When I was sent to quarantine before being transported, I could hear the inmates crying out through the fence, sending me their regards and words of support.
AO: Throughout your time in prison, the war in Ukraine was ongoing, and the Russian military was recruiting heavily from the prisons. Was the war something you felt directly during your time in prison?
KL: Yes, certainly. In the colony, for example, the barracks were half empty because many prisoners had volunteered to go to the frontlines in exchange for having their sentences reduced. At least we had enough beds!
I don’t want to defend military personnel, but many prisoners were previously conscripted and were serving time for abandoning their posts. I also met men who, despite being critical of the authorities and the military hierarchy, said they would rather sign a contract and serve at the frontlines than finish their prison sentence. In any case, they—and we—bear responsibility for this war. But I want to draw a distinction between responsibility and guilt, because not everyone who is responsible is also guilty.
AO: What do you mean by that distinction?
KL: Well, take the example of Nazi Germany. The German philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that collective guilt is “senseless.” If all of society is guilty—if everyone is to blame—then there’s no one left to blame individually. For instance, if my entire high school class decides to skip school for a day and I follow along, then when we return the next day and the teacher asks me why I left, I could simply say, "everyone else did." Blame should fall on those directly responsible for the war, for this crime. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take responsibility for what’s happening now. By taking responsibility, we acknowledge that we have the power to prevent it from happening again.
AO: You were still in prison when Alexei Navalny—who was in a prison colony himself, facing 19 years—died suddenly. It was later reported that he was also supposed to be part of a prisoner swap. As someone who had such a profound impact on your earlier political development, how did you react to his death? Did news travel quickly?
KL: At the time, I was in a temporary detention center, awaiting transfer from one prison to another. I heard reports of his death twice on the radio. Of course, it was the official [state] version, but I was surprised they covered it at all. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I had always associated him with hope, and the news hit me hard. But he was a strong person, and I thought that if Alexei Navalny could survive under such conditions, then surely, I could too.
AO: An entire saga could be written about this, but in just a few words, can you describe your feelings during your own prisoner exchange?
KL: I’ll say this: when I met Chancellor Scholz, I thanked him profusely and assured him that I never gave up hope from the moment of my arrest. I believed, every step of the way, that efforts were being made to secure my freedom. It felt like a movie—and this movie is certainly still ongoing.
AO: You now reside in Germany as a citizen—how do you feel about the rise of the AfD? How can you explain Germany’s potential pivot to the far-right, in spite of its history?
KL: First, I’m really concerned about the AfD’s ties to Russia. I recently read that one of their members owns an onion farm using labor from Belarusian political prisoners. There are also obvious financial links between AfD members and the Kremlin.
So why do people still vote for them? It’s mostly Germans from the eastern part of the country. After WWII, West Germans had to reckon with why their country embraced Nazism. But in the East, under Soviet influence, the focus was more on anti-fascism as part of Communist ideology. As a result, the Nazi past was kind of brushed aside and framed as something defeated by the Soviet Union. There wasn’t much effort to confront or really address the history of Nazism. This lack of public reckoning created a situation where right-wing views didn’t get the same attention, and they weren’t really dealt with. That’s partly why we’re seeing the rise of right-wing parties like the AfD today.
AO: For a 19-year-old, you have some compelling thoughts on politics. Considering your dual German-Russian heritage—both countries having experienced different forms of dictatorship—do you see it as your mission to sound the alarm on the dangers of autocracies? And more broadly, what are your thoughts on the future of Russia?
KL: Before my arrest, I wanted to study biology. But now, I’m certain I want to study law and political science. As for Russia, I don’t think there are enough political resources to enable change within the country just yet. The majority of Russians are passive observers, not outright supporters of the war. We mustn’t forget that Putin has been in power for 25 years, and the first thing he did was control state media. For all those years, people have been under the influence of propaganda. Society can only change once that influence is removed.
For Russia to improve, Putin must leave power, and the Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation must be rightfully returned to Ukraine. The world must never forget that Putin is a dictator—a fascist with imperialist ambitions. He has blood on his hands.
AO: All important points. How are you feeling now, navigating daily life in Germany, where you’re living with your mother and stepfather? Are you making friends at school?
KL: I don’t really have any friends at school. They have no idea what it’s like to be a political prisoner—they don’t even understand what it means to live under a dictatorship. I have a few Russian classmates who grew up here, but their families are completely pro-Putin. One even told me his family is planning to move back to Russia soon. Once they found out who I was, they stopped talking to me—probably because their parents told them to.
I also want to stress that there are still hundreds of political prisoners in Russia. If any ceasefire agreements between Russia and Ukraine are made in the near future, a key condition must be the release of all political prisoners. I feel strongly about this because I know exactly what it’s like to be in their shoes.
Towards the end of our conversation, once the recording was off, Lick told me about how he stays in touch with other political prisoners who were exchanged with him, including Ilya Yashin—the opposition leader who now also lives in Germany. A former close ally of the late opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, Yashin was sentenced to 8.5 years in 2022 for allegedly sharing “false” information about Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
It was one of the few moments Lick smiled during our conversation, glancing down at his feet as he recalled, gleefully, that he was planning on seeing Yashin soon.
Later, Lick sent me a follow-up message in English, wanting to emphasize a point from our interview. “A mandatory part of any peace agreement should be the freeing of political prisoners in Russia,” he wrote.