US and Russia conduct largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War
Russia and the United States have completed their largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War era, with 24 people released in total. Among them is Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned in 2023 and accused of espionage, charges he and the US government deny.
The journalist has already landed in the US, where he has been received by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who played a key role in the negotiations for the prisoner swap deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to a White House official, Harris met separately with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February to urge both leaders to push for the deal.
In addition to Gershkovich, Moscow has also included in this exchange - which took place in Turkey - the American Paul Whelan, a former Marine detained in Russia in 2018 when he visited the country to attend a friend's wedding. The Russian authorities then charged him with espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.
Among the prisoners released by Russia are also a German citizen, Rico Krieger, sentenced to death in Belarus after being accused of terrorism and mercenary activities, and Russian political dissidents, such as Alsu Kurmasheva or Vladimir Kara-Murza, accused of treason after publicly condemning the war in Ukraine.
Criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was also the reason for the authorities' arrest of opposition figure Ilya Yashin, who has now been released. Yashin, who is close to Alexey Navalny, was convicted of spreading "fake" news about the killing of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha.
A similar fate befell artist and musician Alexandra Skochilenko - also released - who was sentenced to seven years in prison after replacing price tags with anti-war messages in a St. Petersburg shop as an act of protest.
The recently released prisoners also include human rights defenders such as Oleg Orlov, former head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation Memorial, and Andrei Pivovarov, leader of the banned Open Russia movement.
Also included are figures close to the late Navalny, such as Lilia Chanysheva, Ksenia Fadeeva and Vadim Ostanin.
The others released by Russia are Kevin Lik, Demuri Voronin, Herman Moyzhes and Patrick Schoebel.
In return, eight Russian prisoners were released from prisons in the United States, Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovenia - as well as the children of two of the prisoners - who were received by President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Prominent among the released Russians who have returned to the country is Vadim Krasikov, a former senior FSB colonel who was serving a life sentence in a German prison for the 2019 murder of former Chechen fighter Zelimkhan "Tornike" Khangoshvili in Berlin.
Moscow had been fighting for Krasikov's release for years. In fact, as reported by CNN, an associate of Navalny claimed that the Russian opposition leader was just days away from being exchanged for Krasikov before he died a Russian penal colony.
Vadim Konoshchenok, accused of money laundering, and fraudsters Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznev have also been returned to Russia, as have spy couple Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva.
Spy Mikhail Mikushin and Spanish-Russian journalist Pablo Gonzalez, arrested in Poland in February 2022, shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine, for alleged espionage, have also been released.