New Delhi: Two reporters, a former US marine, a Pulitzer-winning columnist, a teenager who was against the Ukraine war, spies and a “patriot” assassin were among 24 prisoners released Thursday, hours after Washington and Moscow completed their largest ever exchange deal in the post-Soviet era that involved multiple countries.
In the swap of a total of 24 prisoners that took place at the international airport in Turkey’s capital Ankara, 16 were released from Russian custody, among whom were three Americans.
The US, and allies Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland freed eight Russians, among whom were mostly undercover spies and a convicted assassin who was in a German prison for years.
The deal, which according to reports, was initially centred around the release of Alexei Navalny, the former jailed Russian opposition leader, spurred the swap of 24 individuals after his death. There were journalists and political prisoners, too, among the lot where the youngest prisoner exchanged was 19, and the oldest 71.
Late Thursday night, the three Americans, including reporter Evan Gershkovich, touched down on US soil and were met by President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the Maryland air force base.
Apart from Gershkovich, 32, who was in a Russian prison for 16 months, the other two were security contractor Paul Whelan, 54, and Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, a Russian American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Meanwhile, convicted Russian assassin Vadim N. Krasikov — one of the biggest names released by the West — was given a life sentence by German courts in 2021 for the murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin.
Krasikov, who was called a patriot by Putin, was originally intended to be exchanged for Navalny, according to reports.
Despite ties between Russia and the US being at its lowest after the start of Moscow’s war with Ukraine in February 2022, prisoner swaps have continued to happen, including the one that saw the return of US basketball star Brittney Griner in December 2022.
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What were the charges?
Evan Gershkovich: Gershkovich, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, was detained by Russian authorities in March 2023, during a trip to the Russian city of Yekatarinburg. He was charged with espionage — the first such case against a Western journalist since 1986, according to reports — and convicted in July 2024. He was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony after just three hearings.
Gershkovich was accused of attempting to steal secrets from a Russian facility in Yekaterinburg that builds tanks and other weapons. The US called the charges politically motivated and denied the reporter had anything to do with its intelligence apparatus.
Paul Whelan: A former US marine who served in Iraq, Whelan was arrested by Russian authorities in 2018 at the famous Hotel Metropol in Moscow, while attending a friend’s wedding. A frequent traveller to Russia, Whelan accepted a USB flash drive from a friend during the wedding, which was followed by his arrest, according to The New York Times. He was charged with spying.
After a trial held entirely behind closed doors, Whelan was sentenced to serve 16 years in prison in a high-security penal colony, where he sewed garments. According to reports, Whelan was assaulted by another prisoner in November 2023. He is a citizen of the US, the UK, Canada and Ireland.
Vladimir Kara-Murza: A Pulitzer winning columnist, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason — the longest sentence given to an opposition leader in Russia, since the fall of the USSR. The 42-year-old political dissident survived two attempts of poisoning in 2015 and 2017, which he blamed on Russia.
He was arrested in 2022, two months after Russia invaded Ukraine, for denouncing the war, and, while in prison, wrote columns for The Washington Post. The columns were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2024.
Kara-Murza, who also has British citizenship, is a politician, historian and author. He was arrested based on a speech he made to the Arizona House of Representatives, where he was critical of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Alsu Kurmasheva: Kurmasheva holds both Russian and US citizenship, and was arrested in 2023 in her hometown of Kazan, while visiting her ailing mother. She was an editor working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and had been living in Prague for about two decades with her husband and children.
In July 2024, Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in a Russian penal colony for spreading false information. She was first fined by Russian authorities for failing to disclose her American citizenship, and charged as a foreign agent in the country.
Kurmasheva, 47, worked for Tatar-Bashkir service of RFE/RL.
Kevin Lick: A dual Russian-German citizen, Lick, 19, was the youngest prisoner in this East-West exchange. He was 17 and in high school in the town of Maykop in Russia before being sentenced to four years in a penal colony in 2023.
Lick was accused of state treason, as he was opposed to the war in Ukraine, and was “caught” sending photographs of Russian troops to a foreign representative.
Oleg Orlov: The 71-year-old Russian dissident, the oldest of prisoners exchanged, is a veteran activist and human rights activist, affiliated with the human rights group Memorial, which is one of the oldest such organisations in Russia, as reported by The New York Times.
Orlov, the co-chair of the Nobel prize winning group, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in February 2024 for his continued opposition to the war in Ukraine.
In 2021, a Russian court ordered the Memorial to be dissolved after the government designated it as a foreign agent.
Vadim N. Krasikov: The biggest name released by the West, Krasikov was convicted of assassinating a Chechen separatist fighter in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019 and was sentenced to life in prison in 2021.
The German judiciary concluded that he was ordered by Russian security forces to kill Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who was of Chechen ethnicity.
Putin denied the government had any involvement in the assassination, but in February praised Krasikov for being a patriot, who “eliminated” a bandit in a European capital.
Roman Seleznov: A Russian hacker and son of a lawmaker, Seleznov was convicted in the US in 2017 for stealing millions of credit card details and selling them online. He was sentenced to 14 years by a US court and ordered to pay $170 million in restitution to his victims.
Seleznov pleaded guilty to playing a key role in a $50-million cyber fraud ring.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)