Major inmate swap frees dissidents, U.S. journalists from Russian prisons

BERLIN – A prisoner swap Thursday among seven countries freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans held in Russia, along with several jailed Russian dissidents, in a deal whose size and complexity has no parallel in the post-Soviet era.

The trade freed 15 people imprisoned by Russia and one by its ally Belarus, in return for eight held in Western countries, including a convicted assassin and several held as Russian spies. It was all the more remarkable for taking place 21/2 years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin has cast as a war for Russian survival against the United States and its allies who are arming and financing Ukraine.

The deal, culminating a long and elaborate web of negotiations behind the scenes, delivered a diplomatic victory for President Joe Biden, who has long pledged to bring home imprisoned Americans and to support Russia’s ruthlessly repressed democracy advocates, journalists and war critics.

“Their brutal ordeal is over, and they’re free,” Biden said at the White House, speaking of the freed Americans, whose relatives flanked him. “Moments ago, their families and I were able to speak to them on the phone from the Oval Office,” he said, and he wished them “welcome almost home.”

The exchange took place at the international airport in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, and involved seven planes ferrying the 24 prisoners from the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia, according to the Turkish government, which has positioned itself as a mediator between Moscow and the United States throughout the war in Ukraine.

It was a triumph of a different sort for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has long highlighted his loyalty to Russian agents captured abroad. In nearly a quarter-century in power, he has leveraged the Russian law enforcement and court systems for political advantage, using them as tools of domestic repression but also for the prosecution of foreigners, sometimes on sham espionage charges or drug offenses, for use in prisoner swaps.

The trade freed Gershkovich, 32, who had spent 16 months in a Russian prison; Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, a Russian American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was also arrested last year; and Paul Whelan, 54, arrested in 2018. Five of those released were Germans or people with dual German and Russian nationality.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while traveling in Japan, told reporters that he had spoken with the Americans and that “they all sounded strong of voice, strong of mind, strong of spirit.” Officials said the three boarded a plane in Ankara bound for Joint Base Andrews near Washington, where Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris planned to meet them.

The deal also freed some of the best-known Russian critics of the Kremlin: Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, a Washington Post contributor who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary this year; Ilya Yashin, 41, a politician who spoke out against the war in Ukraine, an act Russia has criminalized; and Lilia Chanysheva, 42, and Ksenia V. Fadeyeva, 32, two associates of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at 47 in a Russian prison in February.

Oleg Orlov, 71, co-chair of Memorial, the Russian human rights group, and Aleksandra Y. Skochilenko, 33, an artist who left price tags with anti-war messages in a supermarket, were also released.

In a statement, the Kremlin said that Putin had pardoned those convicted in Russia to enable their release and that the country was “grateful to the leadership of all countries that assisted.”

In exchange, Germany released Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of murdering a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin in 2019 on orders from the Russian government.

Slovenia set free Maria Mayer and Ludwig Gisch, whom Slovenian authorities arrested in December 2022, accusing them of being Russian “illegals” – deep-cover spies – posing as Argentine immigrants and living in Ljubljana, the capital, under pseudonyms. On Wednesday, the two pleaded guilty to espionage and were sentenced by a Slovenian court.

The United States, Norway and Poland each released one person accused of spying for Russia, and the U.S. government also returned two Russian hackers convicted of financial cybercrimes.

Hours after the trade in Ankara, Putin greeted the Russians freed by the West on a red carpet laid out on the tarmac at the Vnukovo Airport in Moscow. State television showed him embracing Krasikov, the first off the plane, and clapping him on the back and upper arm.

“I want to congratulate all of you on your return to the motherland,” Putin told the group of returned Russians.

The deal was negotiated primarily by senior officials of the CIA; its German counterpart, the BND; and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the Russian domestic intelligence agency formerly known as the KGB.

The swap was the latest and largest of several prisoner exchanges that the Biden administration has negotiated with Putin even as the relationship between Russia and the United States has hit new lows over the war in Ukraine. In 2022, the United States freed Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, in exchange for Russia’s release of Brittney Griner, the basketball star arrested on cannabis possession charges.

For Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, agreeing to the release of Krasikov, the convicted assassin, was politically risky – a signal of his commitment to the alliance with the United States and to supporting the Russian opposition, but a gamble that voters would not punish his government for releasing the man convicted of one of the highest-profile killings in Germany’s recent history.

“I particularly owe a great sense of gratitude to the chancellor,” Biden said at the White House. “The demands they were making of me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question.”

The president took a swipe at Donald Trump, his predecessor, who has denigrated American allies and alliances. “For anyone who questions whether allies matter – they do; they matter,” Biden said. “And today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world.”

When a reporter asked about Trump’s claim that he could win the release of Americans from Russia without giving anything in return, Biden shot back, “Why didn’t he do it when he was president?”

The negotiations for a prisoner swap accelerated with the arrest of Gershkovich in March 2023 on espionage charges that were widely seen outside Russia as fabricated and denounced as fiction by his employer and the U.S. government.

Russian prosecutors accused the reporter of gathering classified information for the CIA about a major military factory near Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains. But they have not made public any evidence to back up the charge, and his trial was held behind closed doors.

Gershkovich, the American-born son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, became widely recognized in the West as a symbol of press freedom – or the lack of it – and of the threat to journalists in authoritarian countries. Before his arrest, he had lived and worked in Russia for six years, developing what friends described as a deep affection for the country’s people and culture.

The Wall Street Journal and journalist groups mounted a campaign throughout his incarceration to keep him in the public eye and maintain pressure for his release. In a joint statement Wednesday, the Journal’s publisher, Almar Latour, and editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said, “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.

“Evan and his family have displayed unrivaled courage, resilience and poise during this ordeal,” they added, “which came to an end because of broad advocacy for his release around the world.”

Gershkovich’s family thanked Biden and other officials who made the trade happen, along with the journalists who came to his support. “It’s hard to describe what today feels like,” the family said in a statement. “We can’t wait to give him the biggest hug and see his sweet and brave smile up close.”

Russia made it clear that the prisoner it most wanted from the West was Krasikov, the assassin imprisoned in Germany. Putin praised Krasikov when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked him about Gershkovich in February. Dismissing the fact that Krasikov had been convicted of murder, Putin described him as having been motivated by “patriotic sentiments.”

In recent weeks, the court proceedings against the released Americans suddenly accelerated, suggesting that negotiations for their exchange were speeding up, too; Russia often insists that only after a verdict can an inmate be considered for trade. Russian espionage cases typically last for months, but July 19, only the third day of trial proceedings against Gershkovich, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The same day, a different Russian court convicted Kurmasheva, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor, and sentenced her to s6 1/2 years in prison. She had been charged with failure to register as a foreign agent, a designation Russia applied to journalists, or anyone else, receiving foreign support or subject to foreign influence.

Whelan, a former Marine and former police officer, was arrested in a Moscow hotel; prosecutors said he had a flash drive containing classified information supplied by a Russian contact. His Russian lawyer said Whelan thought the drive contained travel photos and videos.

At the time, Whelan worked in corporate security for an American auto-parts maker, BorgWarner, and had traveled several times to Russia. Relatives said that he had developed friendships with Russians and that when he was arrested, he was there to attend a wedding.

The prisoner exchange left open the fates of other Americans and dissidents remaining in Russian prisons. In June, a court sentenced Yuri Malev, who holds American and Russian citizenship, to 3 1/2 years in prison after he criticized the war in Ukraine on social media.

In July, Michael Travis Leake, an American rock musician, was sentenced to 13 years after prosecutors accused him of organizing a drug-trafficking ring. And Marc Fogel, a teacher at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, was sentenced in 2022 to 14 years in a penal colony on cannabis charges.

In a statement, Fogel’s relatives expressed dismay that he had not been part of the swap.

“It is inconceivable to us that Russian dissidents would be prioritized over U.S. citizens in a prisoner exchange,” they said. “Marc has been unjustly detained for far too long and must be prioritized in any swap negotiations with Russia, regardless of his level of notoriety or celebrity.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.