The US confirmed that 24 people were involved in a exchange of prisoners between Russia and some Western countries, including the USA and Germany.
Among the freed prisoners are US citizens Evan Gershkovich – a Wall Street Journal reporter – and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
As part of the deal, Russian security service assassin Vadim Krasikov was released by Germany.
There have been days of speculation about a major swap between Russia and Western countries, which intensified after several prisoners were transferred from their cells in Russian prisons to unknown locations.
Evan Gershkovich
North American journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony earlier this month after being convicted on espionage charges.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first arrested last March during a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow, by security services.
Prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), charges that Gershkovich, the WSJ and the US government vehemently deny.
It was the first conviction of an American journalist for spying in Russia since the end of the Cold War, more than 30 years ago. After his initial arrest, he was detained in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.
Paulo Whelan
Paulo Whelan54 years old, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020, after being arrested in Moscow on suspicion of espionage in 2018.
The former US Marine is a citizen of four countries – US, Canada, UK and Ireland. His lawyer said he was being held in a prison in the Mordovia region.
After being discharged from military service in 2008 for misconduct, he became a security consultant and began traveling to and from Russia for work.
In December 2018, he was arrested by the Russian state security agency FSB, which claimed he had been “caught spying” in Moscow. His family has always denied the accusations.
Also Kurmasheva
On the same day that Gershkovich was convicted, Russian-American journalist Also Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in a medium security prison after a secret trial.
She was an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US government, and was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military.
Her husband, Pavel Butorin, previously said she was arrested over a book published last year, which was a collection of stories about Russians who opposed the war in Ukraine.
Ms. Kurmasheva holds American and Russian citizenship and lived in Prague with her husband and two daughters. She was detained in June 2023 while visiting her mother in Russia.
Vladimir Kara Murza
Vladimir Kara Murza is a prominent Russian dissident and one of the most vocal opponents of put on regime and an outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine and internal repression of dissent in Russia.
In 2023, the 42-year-old was sentenced to 25 years in prison for spreading “false” information about the Russian army and being affiliated with an “undesirable organization.”
Kara-Murza – a former journalist and politician – denied all allegations.
The British-Russian citizen served his sentence in a prison colony in Siberia, where his wife said he developed a neurological problem as a result of being poisoned.
Ilya Yashin
One of the most prominent Russian opposition figures, Ilya Yashin was arrested in 2022 for “spreading fake news” about the country’s military.
He was arrested after condemning alleged Russian war crimes in Bucha.
After the death of the former opposition leader Alexey Navalny In prison, Yashin said he feared for his life.
He previously accused President Vladimir Putin of going mad with power in a series of letters sent from prison in western Smolensk where he was being held.
Oleg Orlov
Oleg Orlov is a Russian human rights activist who was arrested in February for calling Russia a fascist state and criticizing the war in Ukraine. Previously, he was president of the Nobel Prize-winning Memorial organization.
The 71-year-old was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian armed forces.
In an appeal against his sentence in July, he compared the Russian judicial system to that of Nazi Germany.
His sentence followed a new trial. At his original trial in October last year, he was fined 150,000 rubles (£1,290; $1,630) and walked free from court. His later conviction marked a tightening of repression against opponents of the war.
Lilia Chanysheva
Lilia Chanysheva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison earlier this year after being accused of extremism by authorities.
She served as local coordinator of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption network.
Initially sentenced to seven years in 2023, prosecutors appealed the sentence and told authorities it was too lenient. She was recently held in a center in the Perm region.
Chanysheva was the first Navalny ally convicted on the charge. Most of her other activists fled Russia into exile.
Ksenia Fadeeva
Ksenia Fadeyeva was sentenced to nine years in prison by authorities after being accused of organizing an extremist group.
She had been a local organizer for Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where she was later detained.
Her lawyers argued that she had ended her association with the organization before it was designated an extremist group in 2021.
Most of Navalny’s former officials and allies have been forced to flee Russia into exile in recent years as the Kremlin intensified its crackdown on opposition groups.
Sasha Skochilenko
Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war messages in November as a form of protest.
The replacement labels drew attention to the civilian deaths in Mariupol and said that Russia had become a “fascist state.”
The Saint Petersburg artist has been detained in a city detention center since April 2023.
Kevin Like
German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik was convicted of treason when he was a teenager, becoming the youngest person to be found guilty of the crime.
He grew up in Germany and moved to Russia when he was 12 years old.
Authorities sentenced him to four years in prison last December for allegedly emailing photographs to “representatives of a foreign state” before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The court alleged that he visited and photographed “deployment sites” of Russian troops.
Rico Krieger
German citizen Rico Krieger was accused of planting explosives in Belarus and sentenced to death, before being pardoned by the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, earlier this week.
In a tightly choreographed interview with state-controlled media outlets, he said he was acting on instructions from Ukraine, but no proof was given.
He is believed to have been the first Western citizen to receive the death penalty in Belarus.
Andrei Pivovarov
Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov led the Open Russia Foundationwhich was created by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison for campaigning against Putin.
He was arrested in 2021 after trying to leave the country from Saint Petersburg, accused of running an “undesirable organization”.
Dieter Voronin
Russian-German citizen Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of “treason” after Moscow alleged that he received confidential military information from another journalist, Ivan Safronov, who remains behind bars, AFP reported.
Other German citizens released by Russia were:
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Patrick Schoebel, who was detained in St. Petersburg earlier this year after being found with a package of cannabis gummy bears
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Herman Moyzhes, a Russian-German immigration lawyer who faces treason charges after being arrested in May
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Vadim Ostanin, former head of one of Alexei Navalny’s regional delegations, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023.
Who are Vadim Krasikov and the other Russians freed by the West?
One of the best-known prisoners to be released back to Russia is Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of an exiled Chechen commander in a Berlin park.
During the trial, prosecutors said he was acting under orders from Russia and that he belonged to a highly secret Vympel unit of the FSB.
The lawyers who defended him insisted that he was a construction worker, not a hitman. He denied being known as Krasikov and identified himself as Vadim Sokolov, the name on the passport he was traveling with.
In a recent interview with American talk show host Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted that his country was seeking the release of “patriot” Krasikov in exchange for American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Roman Seleznev
Roman Seleznev was found guilty of running a hacking scheme in 2017, which caused $169 million (£131 million) in damage.
US authorities said he stole credit card details from restaurants and sold them on the black market. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the scheme, which prosecutors say he ran between 2009 and 2013.
According to the Department of Justice, Seleznev used software that allowed him to steal millions of credit card numbers from thousands of companies.
Your father is Valery Selezneva deputy and ally of Putin.
Vadim Konoshchenok
The US charged Vadim Konoshchenok with conspiracy related to purchases and money laundering on behalf of the Russian government in 2022.
He was also considered an FSB agent.
At the time, a statement from the US Department of Justice said he and others illegally purchased and exported highly sensitive electronic components, some of which could be used for military purposes.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva
Husband and wife Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested and convicted on espionage charges in Slovenia.
Each of them was sentenced to 19 months in prison. Their two sons also returned to Russia with them.
Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin
University professor Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin was tasked with collecting intelligence information in Norway on behalf of Russia in 2022, while posing as a Brazilian academic.
Norwegian authorities said he had a Brazilian passport and had worked as a researcher at the University of Tromso since 2021.
He would have known the name José Assis Giammaria.
It is also believed that Mikushin lied about his age and was actually 44, not 37, when he was charged.
Less information is publicly available about other Russians included in the exchange.
Vladislav Klyushin, sentenced to nine years in prison in the US for insider trading, was also included.
Spanish-Russian journalist Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov was arrested in Poland in February 2022, shortly before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Polish authorities accused him of using his freelance journalistic work as cover for intelligence activities.
This story will be updated as the names of more released prisoners are confirmed
