The largest prisoner swap between Russia and the US since the cold war has taken place, as 16 people were freed from Russian custody including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. Several other foreign citizens held in Russia and numerous Russian political prisoners were also freed.
The exchange took place at Ankara airport on Thursday in a complicated operation in which planes arrived from and departed to multiple countries.
Among those returning to Russia was the assassin Vadim Krasikov, who has been held in a German prison since 2019 for the murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin. Additionally, several deep-cover Russian “illegal” spies arrested in Norway and Slovenia were swapped, along with Russians held on criminal charges in US jails.
Putin personally met the Russian prisoners with a red carpet reception at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport along with Kremlin guards in full dress uniform. Putin, who had lobbied personally for Krasikov to be included in the deal, hugged the assassin as he debarked from the plane. He also handed out bouquets of flowers to the family of the alleged GRU spy Pavel Rubtsov, who had posed as a journalist before his arrest in Poland in 2022.
In total, 16 people were released from Russian and Belarusian jails, and eight Russians returned home. Two minors were also sent to Russia, believed to be the children of the couple jailed in Slovenia.
Among those freed by Russia were Gershkovich, the former US marine Paul Whelan and the journalist and joint US-Russian citizen Alsu Kurmasheva. Shortly after their release the US government put out the first picture of the three holding the stars and stripes.
Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidential elections, are expected to personally receive Gershkovich and the other freed prisoners when they arrive at Joint Base Andrews late on Thursday.
Gershkovich’s family said in a statement: “We have waited 491 days for Evan’s release, and it’s hard to describe what today feels like. We can’t wait to give him the biggest hug and see his sweet and brave smile up close. Most important now is taking care of Evan and being together again. No family should have to go through this, and so we share relief and joy today with Paul and Alsu’s families.”
The Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin and several other opposition figures were also freed, including the British-Russian politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and three people who had worked as regional coordinators for the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this year.
The complex deal had involved months of negotiations between multiple countries and came together in extreme secrecy, with the location and exact makeup of the exchange not made public until the last moment. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that Navalny was meant to be a part of the deal before his death in February. On the day of his death, Sullivan said, he met Gershkovich’s mother and said he still saw a path forward for the deal.
The US had been working for months to try to free Gershkovich, who was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the city of Ekaterinburg and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage last month. He pleaded not guilty and the Wall Street Journal and the US government have dismissed the charges as nonsense.
Many observers linked his arrest to a Russian policy that amounts to hostage-taking, with a view to increasing pressure on western countries to release Russian spies, hackers and assassins.
Putin has long made it clear that he was open to an exchange, but insisted that Krasikov was his No 1 target. Putin became “maniacal” about getting Krasikov back, according to one source with knowledge of Kremlin discussions. “It was a symbol that we don’t abandon our people,” said the source.
Putin told the returning Russian prisoners that the Kremlin had “not forgotten about you for a minute” and said that all of those involved in military service would receive state awards.
The Krasikov demand meant the US had to persuade Germany to release a man who had shot dead a Chechen exile in a Berlin park just five years ago. The contours of a swap deal had been agreed in February, which could have included Gershkovich and Navalny, with Krasikov going in the other direction, but the exchange was called off after Navalny’s sudden death – or murder – in prison.
It took several months of delicate and complex negotiations to get the deal back on track again. “The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship,” said Joe Biden, speaking at the White House alongside the families of those released. In a separate statement, he thanked Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey for their help in bringing the deal together.
The Wall Street Journal reported that an hour before Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race he called the prime minister of Slovenia to secure the pardon of two convicted Russian spies necessary for the deal to proceed.
The spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said freeing Krasikov had not been an easy decision, but in the end was deemed a sacrifice worth making. “The state’s interest in carrying out the prison sentence of a convicted criminal was weighed against the freedom, physical wellbeing and – in some cases – ultimately the lives of innocent people imprisoned in Russia and those unjustly politically imprisoned,” he said.
The Biden administration will be pleased to have finally secured the release of Gershkovich, whose case had threatened to become a political football. In a June presidential debate, Donald Trump had claimed he would instantly free the journalist if he won the US election. “I will have him out very quickly, as soon as I take office, before I take office,” Trump said.
But as the deal took shape, it quickly became about many more people than just the detained journalist. Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges in 2020. He has always maintained his innocence, and his family have been pushing for years to have him included in an exchange. Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was based in Prague but had been arrested while visiting Russia for family reasons.
Rico Krieger, a German medic who had been sentenced to death in Belarus after a closed and murky trial on charges of terrorism, was also released as part of the deal. Belarus is a staunch ally of Moscow and may have expedited the trial in order to provide another element of the exchange. Details of Krieger’s case only became public recently, although he was arrested last year. He appeared on Belarusian state television last week in tears, begging the German authorities to intervene in his case.
Several Russian political prisoners were freed in the swap, including Yashin, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition leaders, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in late 2022 for denouncing Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British citizen and longstanding opposition voice, who was sentenced to 25 years for high treason, has also been released. Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most respected human rights defenders, whose Memorial organisation was a shared winner of the Nobel peace prize in 2022, was also released. The 70-year-old had been jailed for 30 months earlier this year.
For the freed Russians, a life in exile awaits them. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, described them as “enemies” and said he hoped they would stay away from Russia in future, the state-run Tass media agency reported. Dmitry Medvedev, the hawkish deputy chair of Russia’s security council and former president, called the freed Russians “traitors” and recommended they should “hide in witness protection programmes”.
It was a sinister farewell threat from the regime, and will not be taken lightly. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer jailed for spying for MI6, was released by Russia in a similar swap in 2010. Eight years later, Russian operatives tracked him down in Salisbury and attacked him with the nerve agent novichok.
The Russians and Germans freed in the deal left Ankara for Germany, while Gershkovich and the other Americans headed for the US on a separate plane.
The Wall Street Journal said in a statement: “We are overwhelmed with relief and elated for Evan and his family, as well as for the others who were released. At the same time, we condemn in the strongest terms Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, which orchestrated Evan’s 491-day wrongful imprisonment based on sham accusations and a fake trial as part of an all-out assault on the free press and truth.”
Before leaving prison, as part of the exchange conditions Gershkovich had been required to write a letter to Putin asking for clemency, the Journal reported on Thursday. It said that he signed the form, and added another request of his own at the end – for a sit-down interview with Putin after he was freed.
