High-profile people imprisoned in Russia, including British citizen Vladimir Kara-Murza and American journalist Evan Gershkovich, have been freed as part of a massive prisoner swap.
In the largest exchange of its kind since the Cold War, several people have been freed.
They include Mr Kara-Murza, a dual British and Russian citizen, Mr Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
About two dozen people from countries including Russia, the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Belarus have been transferred.
Among those released from Western prisons is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin in 2019.
President Joe Biden will meet with the families of freed Americans at the White House on Thursday.
The complex trade was negotiated in secret with Russia and several other countries for more than a year and represents a major achievement for the parties and will be presented by the Biden administration as a major foreign policy success in an election year.
Those released from Russian custody are: Kara-Murza, Gershkovich, Whelan, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, Dieter Voronin, Kevin Lick, Rico Krieger, Patrick Schoebel, Herman Moyzhes, Ilya Yashin, Liliya Chanysheva, Kseniya Fadeyeva, Vadim Ostanin, Andrey Pivovarov, Oleg Orlov and Sasha Skochilenko.
Those released from Western prisons are: Krasikov, Artem Viktorovich Dultsev, Anna Valerevna Dultseva, Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin, Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, Roman Seleznev, Vladislav Klyushin and Vadim Konoshchenock.
Russia and the West have a long history of prisoner exchanges
Thursday’s exchange has been billed as the largest since the Cold War, a time when the exchange of spies, agents and captured innocent citizens trapped on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain was commonplace.
A well-known location for spy exchanges was the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam in the former East Germany.
It was the site of a 1962 exchange, depicted in the film Bridge of Spies, between KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel and Gary Powers, the pilot of an American spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union.
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not mean the end of the trade in spies and other captured citizens.
The last significant exchange in the post-Cold War era took place in 2010 on the tarmac of Vienna International Airport, when 10 Russian spies, including Anna Chapman, detained by the United States, were exchanged for four people released by Russia, including they Russians. Double agent Sergei Skripal, an MI6 agent.
Eight years later, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in the cathedral city of Salisbury in a failed assassination attempt carried out by Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Ankara, the Turkish capital, was chosen as the location for the latest exchange.
The largest known spy exchange between the Eastern bloc and Western powers took place in 1985, after a three-year period of talks. These were 25 people imprisoned in East Germany who were exchanged for four Eastern Europeans held by the Allies.
Kara-Murza, an opposition politician in Russia, was jailed for 25 years on charges of making public comments critical of the Kremlin.
His arrest in April 2022, weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, came as authorities intensified their crackdown on dissent to levels not seen since Soviet times.
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Evan Gershkovich. File photo: Reuters
“Joyful day” for the journalist’s release
In a letter, Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said it was a “happy day” following the release of her reporter, Mr. Gershkovich.
And he added: “That it was done in exchange for Russian agents guilty of serious crimes was predictable as the only solution, given President Putin’s cynicism.”
Gershkovich was arrested and detained in March 2023 after Russia claimed he had been “collecting secret information” on the orders of the CIA.
Gershkovich, 32, said the charges against him were false and his employer called the case a sham.
Germany: Decision to release Krasikov is not easy
Confirming the release of convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov, the German government said it had not been an easy decision.
He had been serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Georgian citizen who had fought against Russian troops in Chechnya and then sought asylum in Germany.
German judges said he acted on orders from Russian authorities, who gave him a false identity, a passport and the resources to carry out the murder.
The murder and subsequent sentencing sparked a major diplomatic dispute between Russia and Germany, including tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.
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