Longest-held Russian dissident freed in swap says ‘colors get brighter by the day’ in his new life

Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — Of all the Russian dissidents freed in the historic East-West prison swap on Aug. 1, Andrei Pivovarov spent the most time behind bars – three years. Much of that sentence was served in isolation and under constant surveillance in one of Russia’s harshest penal colonies. In an interview with The Associated Press, the 42-year-old opposition politician describes how he survived that ordeal — by mentally counting the hours left in his sentence or by using a scrap of a letter from his wife as a precious bookmark. The new reality of life in Germany overwhelmed him at first. But he says it’s getting easier and “colors get brighter by the day.”