Putin Gets Ready to Swap U.S. Captives for Russian Assassin

Nearly a dozen high-profile political prisoners in Russia have been quietly shuffled from their cells in recent days, fueling hopes that a major prisoner swap may be imminent.

Rumors flew Wednesday that such a deal between Russia and the U.S. and their respective allies could include Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained by Russian authorities in March 2023.

Earlier this month, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony under espionage charges internationally condemned as fabricated.

Moscow previously said that there was no chance of Gershkovich being exchanged until after his sentencing. On Tuesday, the Kremlin declined to comment to Reuters on the possibility of a swap involving the journalist. A spokesperson for The Wall Street Journal did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

But two sources involved in the negotiations—investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov—confirmed to The Daily Beast that the swap was on.

Grozev, a former investigator with the open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat, said the swap would take place in Ankara, Turkey, with a “second part” possibly set to take place in Doha, Qatar. The exchange was negotiated between Russia, Belarus, the U.S., and Germany.

Grozev said that more than a dozen political prisoners being held in Russia would be swapped for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin jailed in Germany whom President Vladimir Putin has openly said he wants freed. Dobrokhotov estimated at least seven prisoners would be exchanged for Krasikov.

Who these prisoners might be remained unconfirmed on Wednesday evening. But lawyers for Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, confirmed to Reuters hours earlier that both men had vanished from view, a sign they’d been moved. Whelan’s lawyer told the Interfax news agency that she’d been unable to get in contact with him or prison administrators.

The pair’s disappearance follows the reported transfer of at least nine other high-profile prisoners on Tuesday, including Ilya Yashin, a prominent Kremlin critic, and several associates of Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader who died in a remote Arctic penal colony under mysterious circumstances earlier this year.

The moved Navalny allies include human rights activist Oleg Orlov, artist Alexandra Skochilenko, and former Navalny regional coordinators Lilia Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva, according to the Associated Press.

“Given the number, we understand that a swap is expected,” lawyer Ivan Pavlov told the wire.

A columnist for The Moscow Times, an independent newspaper, reported on Wednesday that Russia may be readying to exchange between 20 and 30 political prisoners. Russian media previously reported that around 10 high-profile detainees could be freed.

A source familiar with the matter told the Times that it was his understanding that Gershkovich was among those on the list to be swapped.

A lawyer for one of the moved prisoners told The Washington Post on Tuesday that, though they hadn’t officially been informed of any impending swap, “everything looks very unusual and extraordinary; something very unusual is going on.

“I don’t believe in coincidences; it looks like well-coordinated actions,” the lawyer added.

The White House demurred on the subject of a possible prisoner swap when asked by reporters on Wednesday. John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, told Puck News that he was unable to comment on the issue.

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“I can’t,” he said. “I think you can understand we wouldn’t want to mess anything up to prevent there from being a positive result.”

Besides Krasikov, who Moscow might demand back remains similarly unconfirmed. But in another major clue, Politico noted on Wednesday that at least five high-profile Russians held in U.S. prisons appeared to have been removed from the American federal prisoner database.

One of the missing prisoners is Alexander Vinnik, a Russian cryptocurrency operator who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in May. His lawyer told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that he could not comment on the existence of a possible prisoner swap “until it takes place.”

Grozev told The Daily Beast that any prisoner swap would be “bittersweet,” and would not take place without lasting consequences for international relations.

“It’s all very bittersweet—on the one hand this deal ensures the freedom of more than a dozen people, including Russian and American journalists, who were rotting away in Russian prisons on insane charges,” he said.

“On the other hand, it rewards Putin’s belief that the West is transactional and as long as he hoards ‘swap capital’ he will always be able to get his killers, hackers, and spies back. And as long as he gets them back home, he can count on a continuing stream of killers and spies continuing to accept missions to terrorize the world with a sense of impunity.”

That’s particularly true for Krasikov, who in addition to being a hit man is a high-ranking colonel within the Russian secret service FSB. He has served four years of a life sentence for the 2019 “state-ordered murder” of a Kremlin critic and registered asylum seeker in Berlin.

“He will go home to a hero’s welcome,” Grozev said.

Russia’s last prisoner swap with the U.S. took place in December 2022, when it exchanged American basketball player Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The largest swap between the two nations occurred in 2010, when 10 alleged Moscow sleeper agents were quietly flown to Vienna and exchanged for four people convicted of spying for the U.S.