US and Russia complete biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history

The Journal confirmed the release, with top editor Emma Tucker saying in a staff email: “I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same.”

The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries. But the release of Americans has come at a price: Russia has secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the US considers bogus.

The White House did not immediately release any details on the deal.

In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.

Capus said the broadcaster welcomed ’’news of Alsu’s imminent release and is grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia.”

Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.

The deal would be the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the US in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.

President Joe Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”

Russia also got back Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services, according to a statement from the Turkish government.

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.

US officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s Democratic administration has not made public any possible deals since then.

Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after travelling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the US have also said were false and trumped up, and he is serving a 16-year prison sentence.

Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Reed and Griner.

Who’s in the massive prisoner swap between Russia and the West?

One spent over 5½ years behind bars in Russia while other, higher-profile detainees were released ahead of him. Another was jailed for only a few months. They include journalists, veteran political activists and those simply opposed to the war in Ukraine. The youngest is 19, and the oldest is 71.

Among the Russians jailed in the West were alleged sleeper agents who lived double lives. Others were convicted of hacking computers. One was imprisoned for the brazen, daytime shooting death of a man in a Berlin park.

On Thursday, they walked free – part of the largest East-West civilian prisoner swap since the Cold War:

Released by Russia and Belarus

EVAN GERSHKOVICH, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023. Without providing evidence, authorities accused him of “gathering secret information” at the CIA’s behest about a military equipment factory — an allegation that Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently denied. Jailed since then, a court convicted Gershkovich, 32, of espionage in July after a closed trial and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

PAUL WHELAN, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was arrested in 2018 in Moscow, where he was attending a friend’s wedding. He was accused of espionage, convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, 54, has rejected the charges as fabricated.

ALSU KURMASHEVA, a dual US-Russian national, was arrested in 2023 in her hometown of Kazan, where she was visiting her ailing mother. The Prague-based editor for the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service was accused of not self-reporting as a “foreign agent” and was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military — charges rejected by her family and employer. Kurmasheva, 47, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA, a dual Russian-UK citizen and prominent opposition politician, was arrested in 2022, after criticizing the war in Ukraine that had begun weeks earlier. He was convicted in 2023 of treason and other charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison in a case he calls politically motivated. A columnist for The Washington Post, Kara-Murza, 42, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize this year. He fell ill in 2015 and 2017 from two near-fatal poisonings he blames on the Kremlin. His wife and lawyers say his health is deteriorating in prison as a result of the poisonings.

ILYA YASHIN is a prominent Kremlin critic who was serving an 8 1/2-year sentence for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Yashin, a former member of a Moscow municipal council, was one of the few well-known opposition activists to stay in Russia since the war.

ANDREI PIVOVAROV, 42, headed the opposition group Open Russia, which authorities outlawed in 2021. He was pulled off a flight and arrested that same year. In 2022, he was convicted of carrying out activities of an “undesirable” organization and sentenced to four years in prison.

OLEG ORLOV, a veteran human rights campaigner, was convicted of discrediting the Russian military and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in February for his protests of the war in Ukraine. Orlov, 71, is co-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial.

SASHA SKOCHILENKO, 33, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in November 2023 for replacing several price tags in a supermarket with anti-war slogans.

KSENIA FADEYEVA, LILIA CHANYSHEVA and VADIM OSTANIN are former coordinators of regional offices of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny. They were arrested after Navalny’s political network was outlawed in 2021 and later convicted of extremism. Fadeyeva, 32, and Ostanin, 47, were sentenced to 9 years in prison each, and Chanysheva, 42, got a 9 1/2-year term.

KEVIN LIK, 19, a dual Russian-German national, was arrested in southern Russia in February 2023 and accused of taking pictures of a military unit and sending the photos to a “representative of a foreign state.” Court officials said he was opposed to the war in Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to four years in prison, with rights advocates saying Lik, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, was the youngest person convicted of that crime.

RICO KRIEGER, a German medical worker, was convicted in Belarus of terrorism charges in June, and sentenced to death. He was pardoned Tuesday by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

DEMURI VORONIN, a dual Russian-German national, is a political scientist who ran a consultancy that reportedly collaborated with journalists. He was arrested in 2021, convicted of treason in 2023 and sentenced to 13 years and three months in prison. He was implicated in the treason trial of Ivan Safronov, who allegedly passed him information about Russian military activities, which Voronin allegedly then gave to German intelligence.

PATRICK SCHOEBEL, a German national, was arrested in February 2024 at Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg when gummies containing a psychoactive component of cannabis were allegedly found in his possession. He has been detained since then, facing drug-smuggling charges.

GERMAN MOYZHES, a dual Russian-German national, is a migration lawyer who helped Russians apply for European Union residence permits. He was arrested in May in St. Petersburg and reportedly accused of treason, but little else is known about his case.

Released by the West

VADIM KRASIKOV was convicted in 2021 of shooting to death Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, in a Berlin park. The German judges concluded it was an assassination ordered by the Russian security services. Krasikov, 58, was sentenced to life imprisonment. President Vladimir Putin this year hinted at a possible swap for Krasikov.

PAVEL RUBTSOV was arrested in Poland on espionage charges. He is one of a number of people detained there on allegations of spying for Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.

ROMAN SELEZNEV, the son of a Russian lawmaker, was convicted in the U.S. in 2017 of hacking into more than 500 businesses and stealing millions of credit card numbers, which he then sold on websites. Seleznev, a Russian citizen, was sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $170 million in restitution to his victims.

VLADISLAV KLYUSHIN, a wealthy businessman with ties to the Kremlin, was convicted in Boston in 2023 of charges including wire fraud and securities fraud in a nearly $100 million scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen via hacking U.S. computer networks. Klyushin, 43, who was said to have personally pocketed $33 million in the scheme, was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to the U.S. in 2021.

VADIM KONOSHCHENOK, a suspected officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, was extradited to the United States from Estonia last year to face charges he smuggled ammunition and dual-use technology to help Moscow’s war in Ukraine. U.S. prosecutors say he was detained in 2022 while trying to return to Russia from Estonia with about three dozen types of semiconductors and electronic components.

ARTEM DULTSEV and ANNA DULTSEVA, a Russian couple arrested on espionage charges in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2022, pleaded guilty Wednesday and were sentenced to 19 months in prison, and released on time served. Posing as Argentine citizens, they reportedly had used Slovenia as a base since 2017 to travel to neighboring countries and relay Moscow’s orders to other Russian sleeper agents. They have two children.

MIKHAIL MIKUSHIN was arrested in Norway in 2022 on espionage charges. Norway’s domestic security agency PST said Mikushin entered the country saying he was a Brazilian citizen. He was in Norway under a false identity while working for Russia’s intelligence service, Norwegian investigators said.

AP

Photo by Reuters