The prisoner exchange between Russia and the West, which took place on Thursday in Istanbul, resembled moments from the Cold War, complete with the dramatic setting of an isolated airport area.
From Russia, 16 people were released: four to the U.S. and 12 to Germany, one of whom was Belarusian.
In return, Russia received eight prisoners: three from the U.S., two from Slovenia, and one each from Norway, Germany, and Poland.
BREAKING: The first pictures have been released of the Americans who are involved in the prisoner swap between the West and Russia.https://t.co/o6zIPfl5yb
— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 1, 2024
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/hqdAQpY3we
This was one of the most complex prisoner exchanges in history, occurring at a time when relations between the West and Russia are perhaps at their worst. However, it is also one of the few areas where the West and Russia find common ground.
At the same time, it serves as a way, primarily for Russia, to close some minor fronts (at least from its perspective) to focus on the war in Ukraine. For Western countries, it is an opportunity to present a success by repatriating their citizens.
As Joe Biden commented on the release of the prisoners, “The agreement was a diplomatic feat.”
“In total, we negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country. Some of these men and women were unjustly detained for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their ordeal is over,” he said.
Westerners Released from Russia
The full list of those released:
- Dieter Voronin
- Ilya Yashin
- Evan Gershkovich
- Paul Whelan
- Vladimir Kara-Murza
- Rico Krieger
- Alsu Kurmasheva
- Kevin Lick
- German Moises
- Oleg Orlov
- Vadim Ostanin
- Andrey Pivovarov
- Alexandra Skocilenko
- Patrick Sobel
- Liliya Chanysheva
- Xenia Fadeyeva
Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested last year while reporting in Yekaterinburg, east of Moscow. Russian authorities accused him of spying for the CIA and sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. It was the first conviction of an American journalist for espionage in three decades.
Paul Whelan, a 54-year-old former Marine and citizen of the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Ireland, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years after his arrest two years earlier on espionage charges. After being discharged from the military for bad conduct, he worked as a security consultant and frequently traveled to Russia. He was arrested in Moscow without accepting any charges.
Another journalist, Russian-American Alsu Kurmasheva, was sentenced to 6.5 years for disseminating false information about the Russian military. She works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, funded by the U.S. government.
One of the most courageous representatives of the Russian opposition, Vladimir Kara-Murza, returned to Russia in April 2022 despite friends pleading with him not to. The Washington Post columnist was arrested upon his return for speaking against the war in Ukraine in speeches in the United States and was charged with treason.
Rico Krieger, a German citizen sentenced to death in Belarus for terrorism, unexpectedly received a pardon this week and is among those released. He previously worked for the German Red Cross and was convicted in Belarus in June in a trial without independent media coverage or presentation of evidence. After his conviction, he gave a pressured interview to a state TV channel admitting to placing explosives near a railway line on the orders of the Ukrainian Security Service. On Tuesday, Krieger received a pardon from Alexander Lukashenko.
Liliya Chanysheva, 42, head of the regional office of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Bashkortostan, will move to Germany. She was sentenced last year in a closed trial on extremism charges to 7.5 years, later increased to 9.5 years. Xenia Fadeyeva, 32, joined Navalny’s team and was sentenced last year to nine years for extremism.
Oleg Orlov, 71, one of Russia’s longest-serving political prisoners, is a Soviet-era dissident who distributed leaflets against the USSR’s war in Afghanistan. He is a co-chair of Memorial, one of Russia’s historic human rights organizations, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
Ilya Yashin had ties to Navalny and Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015. He was sentenced to 8.5 years for his opposition to the war in Ukraine. Kevin Lick, just 19 years old, was sentenced to 4.5 years for treason for photographing military installations.
Political scientist Dieter Voronin, with dual Russian-German citizenship, was arrested in 2021 by Russian security officers in a treason case against journalist and former advisor to the head of the Russian space agency Ivan Safronov. Last year, he was sentenced to 13 years, and Safronov to 22 years. German citizen Patrick Sobel was arrested at St. Petersburg airport when customs officers found six cannabis candies in his luggage.
German Moises, a lawyer and CEO of a consulting firm, was arrested in St. Petersburg in late May on treason charges. Vadim Ostanin, another Navalny associate, and Andrey Pivovarov, sentenced to four years for leading an “undesirable organization,” were also released. Russian artist and musician Alexandra Skocilenko, with no prior history of political activism, was sentenced to seven years by a St. Petersburg court in November 2023 for covering five supermarket price tags with stickers providing information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russians Repatriated
Eight individuals were returned to Russia:
- Vladislav Klyushin from the U.S.
- Vadim Konoshchenok from the U.S.
- Vadim Krasikov from Germany
- Mikhail Mikushin from Norway
- Artem Dultsev from Slovenia
- Anna Dultseva from Slovenia
- Pavel Rubtsov from Poland
- Roman Seleznev from the U.S.
Vadim Krasikov has long been a person Russia sought to exchange. A German court accused him of assassinating a Georgian in August 2019 in a Berlin park. Krasikov, reportedly an FSB agent, was convicted in 2021 of a “political assassination” ordered by the Kremlin.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a Russian couple posing as Argentine expats in Slovenia, were sentenced to 19 months after pleading guilty to espionage. Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman with Kremlin ties, was sentenced in September 2023 to nine years in a U.S. prison for participating in a $93 million insider trading scheme involving corporate network hacking.
Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian parliamentarian, was sentenced in 2016 by a U.S. federal court in Washington state for organizing cyberattacks on thousands of American businesses. He infiltrated point-of-sale systems to steal and sell credit card information, causing a loss of $169 million to financial institutions.
Vadim Konoshchenok, a Russian citizen with alleged FSB connections, was arrested in Estonia and extradited to the U.S. on July 13, 2023. U.S. officials said he smuggled American-made electronics and ammunition to support Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine.
Polish authorities arrested Spanish-Russian national Pablo Gonzalez, or Pavel Rubtsov, a journalist covering the war in Ukraine for Spanish media, on suspicion of conducting “intelligence activities” in 2022.
Finally, Mikhail Mikushin was arrested in October 2022 in Norway. He entered the country claiming to be a Brazilian academic working on Arctic security issues and was suspected of espionage.
