Russia and the West have in the biggest exchange since the end of the Cold War, with 16 prisoners released from Russia and eight from the West.
The swap was the result of months of secret negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin, further complicated by open conflict between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine war.
US President Joe Biden secured the deal on 21 July, one hour before he released the statement announcing that he would no longer stand in November’s election, a senior US official told reporters.
“Their brutal ordeal is over,” Biden said of the prisoners, as some of their family members appeared at the White House and contacted their loved ones over the phone.
Biden also called the leaders of Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Norway to thank them for agreeing to free Russian prisoners under the deal, and Türkiye for agreeing to host the handover.
Biden and US vice-president Kamala Harris greeted the released prisoners as they disembarked the aeroplane. The freed prisoners shed tears as they embraced their family members on the tarmac.
Harris, , told reporters that it was an “extraordinary day” and she was thankful to Biden for his work in securing the exchange.
“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances,” Harris said.
Prisoners released to the West
Evan Gershkovich
The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter has been detained in Russia since March 2023 and was for spying in a case rejected as a “sham” by the White House.
It was the first espionage case against a Western reporter in Russia since 1986.
Reporter Evan Gershkovich hugs his mother following his release as part of a 24-person prisoner swap between Russia and the United States. Source: AAP / Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
Prosecutors accused Gershkovich of using “painstaking conspiratorial methods” to obtain information about a Russian military-industrial facility.
The top leadership at the Wall Street Journal said they were “overwhelmed with relief” following his release.
Paul Whelan
A former US marine, 54-year-old Whelan was detained in 2018 and had previously complained of being abandoned by Washington after being jailed in Russia since December 2018.
In June 2020, in a remote Russian penal colony for espionage after being detained in a Moscow hotel in 2018 — allegedly with a cache of classified documents.
Alsu Kurmasheva
A Russian-American journalist and editor, Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in July for spreading “false information” about the Russian military,
She was first detained while travelling to Russia from her home in Prague to see her sick mother.
Alsu Kurmasheva hugs US President Joe Biden following her release as part of a 24-person prisoner swap between Russia and the United States. Source: AAP / Alex Brandon / AP
Lilia Chanysheva
The 42-year-old was a former aide to Alexei Navalny, Putin’s major political rival
Chanysheva headed Navalny’s offices in the central Bashkortostan republic and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in June 2023 for having created an “extremist organisation”. The sentence was later extended to nine and a half years in April.
She had worked for major companies, including Deloitte, before joining Navalny’s team in 2017 and openly protesting corruption.
Ksenia Fadeyeva
The 32-year-old was also a former aide to Navalny and was sentenced to nine years in prison for “extremism”.
She headed Navalny’s political office in Tomsk, where the opposition leader was poisoned in August 2020. , which was hailed as a victory for the Russian opposition.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
An outspoken critic of the Kremlin, 42-year-old Kara-Murza was released from a 25-year prison sentence.
He is a journalist and opposition activist who was arrested soon after Moscow launched its February 2022 invasion and .
During his trial, Kara-Murza asserted his opposition to growing authoritarianism in Russia saying to the court: “The day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate, when those who kindled and unleashed this war — rather than those who tried to stop it — will be recognised as criminals.”
Vladimir Kara-Murza was among 16 prisoners released from Russia in a prisoner exchange deal arranged by White House officials along with officials from Russia, Germany, Poland and several other countries. Source: AFP, Getty / Natalia Kolesnikova
His sentence was one of the longest prison terms ever handed down to a Putin critic and was condemned internationally.
Kara-Murza’s treatment behind bars sparked international concern, as he suffers from a nerve disease after falling severely ill in 2015 and 2017 in what he claims were
His poisoning claims have been backed by investigative media outlets, including Bellingcat, the Insider and Der Spiegel.
Oleg Orlov
Orlov was handed a two-and-a-half-year term in February after calling Russia a “fascist” and criticising its war in Ukraine.
A biologist by training, Orlov is a veteran human rights advocate and a leading figure in Memorial, a Nobel-Prize-winning human rights organisation that preserved the memory of victims of Soviet Union repression and campaigned against rights abuses in modern Russia.
Ilya Yashin
A Russian liberal opposition politician, 41-year-old Yashin was for denouncing Moscow’s Ukraine offensive and the “murders of civilians” in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.
Yashin had been a former ally of Navalny and the assassinated opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.
Alexandra Skochilenko
A 33-year-old artist, Skochilenko was arrested in April 2022 and then jailed in November 2023 for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with messages opposing the Ukraine offensive, particularly the .
Andrei Pivovarov
A Russian opposition activist, Pivovarov headed the Open Russia Foundation, which supported victims of human rights violations and spoke out against Russia’s human rights record.
The foundation was one of three non-government organisations founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison for campaigning against Putin.
All three organisations were banned by the Kremlin in 2017 and , dragged off a plane before he could leave the country and sentenced to four years in prison for his work with the organisation, which Russia deemed an “undesirable” entity.
Rico Krieger
A 30-year-old German citizen, Krieger is a former medic who was pardoned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko after being sentenced to the death penalty in June.
Krieger had been convicted in a secretive trial for photographing military sites in Belarus in October 2023 and placing an explosive device on a railway line near Minsk under Ukrainian orders.
Dieter Voronin
A joint Russian-German citizen, Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on treason charges after Moscow alleged he received classified military information from another journalist, Ifan Safronov, who remains behind bars.
Kevin Lick
Lick was arrested at 17 years old and became the youngest person ever convicted of treason in Russia.
He is also a Russian-German citizen and he was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison for allegedly sending photos of a Russian military facility visible from his apartment window to German security services.
Patrick Schoebel
German citizen Schoebel was arrested earlier this year at Saint Petersburg airport after customs officials found cannabis gummy bears in his luggage.
German Moyzhes
A Russian-German migration lawyer, Moyzhes was facing treason charges after he was arrested in Saint Petersburg in May, although almost no details of the case against him have been made public.
Vadim Ostanin
Ostanin is the former head of Navalny’s regional branches. He was sentenced in 2023 to nine years in prison for participating in an “extremist” organisation.
Prisoners released to Russia
Putin gave the Russian prisoners a red carpet welcome at Moscow airport, embracing them as they descended from their plane, TV images showed.
“I want to congratulate you on your return to the motherland,” Putin said. Addressing those who had served in Russia’s military, he said.
“I want to thank you for your loyalty to the oath, duty and the motherland, which has never forgotten about you.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted the released prisoners as they arrived in Moscow. Source: Getty / Mikhail Voskresensky/POOL/TASS/Sipa USA
Vadim Krasikov
Krasikov is a Russian who was jailed in Germany for brazenly assassinating a former Chechen rebel commander by shooting him in a park in daylight in Berlin in 2019.
He is also the prime suspect in the 2013 murder of a Russian businessman who had been the subject of several previous assassination attempts.
German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said the release of Krasikov was “not an easy decision” and called on Russia and Belarus to free all political detainees.
“We hope that all those freed today will recover from their physical and mental ordeals with the support of their friends and family,” Hebestreit said.
Pablo Gonzalez
Gonzelez is a Spanish reporter of Russian origin who was being held in Poland, suspected of spying for Moscow.
He was detained at the Polish-Ukranian border in February 2022 and accused by Poland’s counter-intelligence agency of being an agent of Russia’s military intelligence services.
He had been imprisoned for more than two years on espionage charges and has now been released to Russia, his country of birth.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva
Slovenia sentenced Dultsev and Dultseva, both 40 years old, to more than a year and a half in prison for “spying and falsifying documents”.
Authorities said the alleged Russian secret agents ran an art gallery as part of their cover. They were living in the Slovenia capital of Ljubljana on Argentine passports.
Mikhail Mikushin
, Mikushin was accused of posing as a Brazilian researcher at a university in Tromso.
Investigative outlet Bellingcat said he was a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence services and Norwegian media reported that he did not speak Portuguese, Brazil’s national language.
Pavel Rubtsov
Polish intelligence alleged Rubtsov, a Russian-born Spanish freelance journalist, was an agent for Russia’s GRU military intelligence service in Spain.
Living as Pablo Gonzalez, he was arrested near the Polish border with Ukraine just four days after Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.
Roman Seleznev
The son of a Russian lawmaker, Seleznev , including a 27-year prison sentence for hacking into card payment terminals to steal millions of credit card details.
He was first arrested in 2014 in the Maldives and dubbed a “master hacker”.
Among the prisoners released by Western nations are people convicted of assassination, espionage and hacking. Source: AAP / Sergei Ilyin / Sputnik / Kremlin Pool / EPA
Vladislav Klyushin
Klyushin was also sentenced for hacking crimes in the US, receiving a nine-year sentence in 2023 after netting almost US$100 million ($153 million) by hacking into corporate systems and then illegally trading shares.
Vadim Konoshchenok
The US Justice Department alleges Konoshchenok was a key figure in a scheme to provide US-made ammunition and electronics to Russia to support its offensive in Ukraine.
The prisoner who couldn’t be exchanged
The White House expressed regret for the failure to negotiate the release of Navalny before his death in February.
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan revealed they had been working with their partners on a deal that would have included Navalny before his death.
Navalny was , where he was serving a 19-year sentence after exposing Kremlin corruption.
His death was a shock to the White House team.
One US senior official told reporters that after the news, it “felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails”.
