One of the people freed in last week’s U.S.-Russia prisoner exchange was Alsu Kurmasheva, a Prague-based Russian-American journalist who works for the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In May 2023, she traveled to Russia to visit her mother. She was leaving the country the following month when she was detained at the airport. Her passports were seized and she was subsequently placed under house arrest for months before being formally charged in December 2023. She was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison last month, after a short trial held in secret.

The crime for which Ms. Kurmasheva was charged and later convicted was “spreading false information about Russia’s military.” Inside Russia today, it is a felony to criticize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Any Russian citizen found in violation of that law faces 15 years in jail. Ms. Kurmasheva doesn’t live in Russia, but she got in trouble for her critical reporting on the war.

During those 14 months that Ms. Kurmasheva was held in Russia, her husband and two daughters were left hopeless in Prague. A couple of weeks ago, prior to her release, they appeared in a heartbreaking interview on television in which the younger daughter, who is now 13, talked about having to speak with her mother in her prison cell via phone to obtain the recipe for a dish she was trying to make. Life got worse for her later as the Russian authorities no longer allowed Ms. Kurmasheva to have contact with her family. The older daughter, who is 16, and her sister spent such a critical period of their lives without the presence of their mother.

There was never a guarantee that the girls and their father would see their loved one again anytime soon. It was only thanks to tenacious and exceptional diplomatic work by President Biden and his administration, and the help of leaders of allied countries such as Germany and Slovenia, that they were happily reunited last week. Unfortunately, there are other Americans, including a young woman who recently went to Russia to visit her grandmother, who are currently being held there.

It is quite clear that the Putin regime will continue to use false pretenses to detain Americans who visit Russia. The primary aim is to use the captives as bargaining chips to win the release of Kremlin-affiliated Russians who have been convicted of various crimes and are serving jail sentences in the U.S. and other Western countries. Due to this risk of arrest, the Biden administration has warned American citizens not to travel to Russia. That is prudent, but it is a huge problem because there will now be thousands of Russians in America who cannot visit parents, grandparents, siblings, and other relatives there.

Both of my parents passed away decades ago. I had a precious relationship with them and I cannot imagine not being able to visit them today if they were alive. I particularly take issue with African Putin-apologists who live in the West. I know many from Ghana who happily enjoy the liberty and conveniences that the free world offers, travel frequently to Ghana to visit parents and other relatives, and return to their merry family lives here in the West. Either they have no idea that the support they offer these dictators is what emboldens them to act with such impunity, or they don’t care about the welfare of those who are victimized by that oppression.

The freedom of back-and-forth travel that these Ghanaians enjoy did not come about naturally. Ghana had been under a dictatorship for over a decade until the early 1990s when, under pressure from the U.S. and other Western governments, the junta agreed to elections and a return to democratic rule. Today, Ghana is a free and open society. Average citizens there are able to express their opinions freely without fear of being arrested and jailed.

As a writer and commentator on political, social, and cultural issues, I can appreciate what prisoners of conscience like Ms. Kurmasheva go through. It must feel awful to have strong opinions and be deprived of the ability to express them. Lately, I have become acutely aware of the importance of ordinary citizen vigilance in any society, whether democratic or autocratic. Fortunately for me, I live in a country where I am free to criticize political leaders for any of their policies and actions that I disagree with. I have done so in many recent writings, with the full knowledge that there is little risk of me getting arrested or killed for my commentaries.

The painful truth is that it is not only writers and journalists whose lives are threatened by Putin’s autocratic regime. Millions of average Russians are similarly suffocated by their oppressive state. I cannot take kindly to people who rubbish the West but then enjoy breathing the air of freedom it offers, while enabling despots who keep their heavy boots on the necks of their citizens.