On 1 August 2024, the US-led West and Russia, together with Belarus, conducted the largest and most complex prisoner exchange since the Cold War of 1947-1991. Ten different countries were involved, one of them being Turkey, where the exchange took place at the international airport in its capital, Ankara.
26 people were freed. 15 from Russia and one from Belarus. And from the West: 10 Russian citizens who had been imprisoned or detained in the USA, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Germany, Norway, and the Maldives.
A first, in the history of modern political prisoner swaps, was that seven of those released by Moscow were Russian citizens with no other nationality. They had been convicted of various types of subversive activities, often related to the late Alexei Navalny, and now have the opportunity to learn firsthand what the Western so-called Democracies can offer, beneath the veneers of ”democracy” and ”freedom.”
A Russian James Bond
One of the Russian citizens who was able to return home was the James Bond-like character Vadim Krasikov, reportedly an officer with the Russian counter-espionage agency, and who was serving a life sentence in Germany for assassinating an internationally wanted terrorist named Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a park in Berlin in 2019 — an Islamist whose criminal record included an attack on a school in Beslan in 2004, in which over 334 people were murdered, most of them children.
Moscow initially requested Khangoshvili’s extradition. But for unclear reasons, the German government refused to hand him over to Russian authorities. Instead, former Chancellor Angela Merkel found it to be a better idea to allow the terrorist leader to walk the streets of Berlin a free man.
Eventually, somewhere in Moscow, a decision was reached to eliminate the internationally wanted slayer of children. The sentence was carried out by Vadim Krasikov on 23 August 2019, around noon in the Tiergarten Park in the German capital, just a stone’s throw from the country’s federal government building.
If Germany had extradited Khangoshvili, he would probably be alive today. Russia has a moratorium on the death penalty, and life imprisonment is the sentence other terrorists involved in the Beslan massacre have previously received.
From ”The Americans” to ”The Slovenians”
Four other Russian citizens who landed in Moscow on the evening of 1 August were the Dultsev family, whose parents Anna Valerevna and Artem Viktorovich were illegal operatives living under assumed names as ordinary citizens in Slovenia, from where they, for approximately five years, conducted intelligence operations on behalf of Moscow in Italy, Croatia, and other parts of the European Union.
Readers who have seen the TV series ”The Americans” from 2013-2018 may have an idea of what their activities might have looked like.
Just how criminal Anna’s and Artem’s work for Moscow actually was remains unclear. According to local media, they were in Slovenia sentenced to just one year and seven months in prison each – most of which they seemed to have already served, when the swap happened.
Two American Spies
Two of the repatriated Americans were Paul Wheelan, 54, a former Marine, and Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, 33 – both convicted of espionage in Russia.
After the prisoner swap, RT published two videos said to show how the two men received secret information on USB sticks seconds before they were arrested by Russian authorities.
The Names of All Who Were Exchanged
Here are the names of all those who were exchanged (source Wikipedia).
Released by the East
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Released by the West
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Sources and related
- Wikipedia: 2024 Russian prisoner exchange
- Wikipedia: Capital punishment in Russia
- IISS: The meaning of the prisoner exchange between Russia and the West
- Wall Street Journal: The Russian Spies Next Door
- Slovenia Times: Slovenia hands over two Russian spies in prisoner exchange
- Slovenia Times: Russian spies sentenced to prison
- Slovenia Times: Two Russian spies arrested in Ljubljana
- The Guardian: Russia demands extradition of Ukraine security chief and others for ‘terrorism’
- NewsVoice: Scott Ritter: ”Navalny var en landsförrädare mot Ryssland”
- NewsVoice: Kristoffer Hell: Mördade Väst Navalny?
- NewsVoice: Navalnys hjältegloria har ramlat av
- ANTI-SPIEGEL: Warum Russland zugibt, dass der „Tiergartenmörder“ ein russischer Agent ist
- Wikipedia: Gisslandramat i Beslan
- RT: WATCH ex-US Marine accept secret data before arrest in Russia
- RT: Jailed US reporter knew he was handling classified Russian data (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)