1 Aug, 2024 21:08
US and Russia have carried out the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War: Here’s who was involved
More than two dozen high-profile inmates have been exchanged via Türkiye.1/3
Moscow and Washington haveexchanged a total of 26 prisonersthat had been held in several countries, in the biggest such swap in modern history. The exchange took place on Thursday afternoon in Türkiye.
Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and Russian intelligence operative Vadim Krasikov were the two most prominent names on the swap list.Russia retrieved tenof its nationals in exchange for 16 people sent to the West – 12 to Germany andfour to the US.
“I want to thank you all for staying faithful to your oaths, your duty, and your country that has not forgotten you,” President Vladimir Putin said in Moscow, meeting the returning Russians at the airport personally.
US President Joe Biden confirmed therelease of "three American citizens and one American green-card holder who were unjustly imprisoned in Russia,” describing the exchange as “a feat of diplomacy” and thanking Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Türkiye for helping achieve it.
The last major prisoner swap took place in December 2022, with the US releasing Russian businessman Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner, a basketball player convicted on drug charges in Moscow.
Thursday’s exchange was bigger in volume than ‘Operation Ghost Stories,’ the 2010 swapof US and Russian “sleeper agents.” It was dwarfed only by the 1985 exchange of 25 Americans held in East Germany and Poland for one Polish and three Soviet spies.
Who was sent to the West
Wall Street Journal reporterEvan Gershkovichwas convicted of espionage in early July and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security colony. The 32-year-old was caught “red handed” in March last year soliciting classified information about Uralvagonzavod, a major Russian tank and armored vehicle manufacturer in Ekaterinburg.
Former US MarinePaul Whelanwas detained in December 2018 at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel in a FSB sting operation. He was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a maximum-security colony in Mordovia. The 54-year-old US-British-Irish-Canadian citizen recently urged Washington to “fill up Guantanamo Bay with Russian officials, arrest Russian spies” in order to secure his release.
Rico Krieger, a German citizen and the first Westerner to be sentenced to death in Belarus, was pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday. The 29-year-old was found guilty by a court in Minsk in early July on six criminal counts, including “mercenary activity” and an “act of terrorism,” for detonating an explosive charge on a rail line on behalf of Ukrainian intelligence.
Vladimir Kara-Murzais a dual citizen of Russia and the UK. He was sentenced in 2023 to 25 years in a maximum-security colony for treason, among other charges. Kara-Murza had accused Russian troops of committing war crimes in Ukraine and served as vice-chairman of the Washington-based Free Russia Foundation – a US-funded pressure group which has pushed for “regime change” in Moscow. He was a protege of the late opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and a close associate of exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky….
https://www.rt.com/russia/602020-russia-us-prisoner-swap-names/