US-Russia prisoner swap

On August 1, the largest prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War took place. Sixteen people detained in Russia were released, while eight prisoners held in the US, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, and Poland were sent back to Russia.

Among the 16 were two journalists, the Wall Street's Evan Gershkovich, detained in 2023 while working as a reporter, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist serving a six-year sentence after being convicted for spreading false information about the Russian military.

Another key release was Paul Whelan, arrested on charges of espionage in 2020 and serving a 16-year jail sentence at a prison labour camp.

The key release for Russia was the freeing of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian colonel and an elite operative of the Federal Security Service who murdered Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen exile in a German park in 2019.

The brazen murder would be a sticking point in discussions with German authorities on the critical release.

Other prisoners of interest to Russia in the swap were identified as convicted spies, a fraudster and a hacker.

The discussions between nations holding Russian prisoners and Russian representatives took almost two years. Alexei Navalny, former leader of the opposition in Russia was a key figure in most of these discussions.

A planned swap in February was scuttled after Mr Navalny, who had survived an attempted poisoning in 2020 and was arrested on his return to Russia in 2021, died in prison in unexplained circumstances.

Without Mr Navalny as a bargaining chip, the balance of the exchange demanded more nuanced consideration.

Thursday's exchange included several Russian anti-Putin or pro-Navalny activists who have effectively been expelled from their home country.

The only comparable prisoner exchange took place in 2010 when ten Russian spies held in the US were swapped for four alleged double agents imprisoned in Russia.

Recent prisoner exchanges were smaller in scale. In 2022, Trevor Reed, a former US Marine, was exchanged after three years in Russian prison for a Russian citizen jailed for cocaine trafficking.

Until Thursday's exchange, the highest profile prisoner exchange was the swap of WNBA player Brittney Griner, arrested in February 2022 on drug-related charges, for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Politically, Mr Putin welcomed the freed prisoners as heroes when they returned. There are concerns that the exchange is a validation of his government's use of the dubiously-imprisoned as stakes in these exchanges.

But one unintended consequence of Mr Putin's decision to proceed was the timing of the news to President Biden who was recovering from covid at his vacation home. An hour after he received the news, the president announced that he would not be seeking re-election. The timing of the swap gave a boost to the Biden administration, in itself a surprising and potentially calculated move.