It was the largest, most elaborate prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
On Thursday, 24 prisoners were gathered to be exchanged at Esenboga airport in the Turkish capital of Ankara before boarding jets to fly them home.
Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted eight of his compatriots, who had been held in Europe and the United States on charges from cyber-fraud to espionage and murder, when they touched down in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
“I want to congratulate everyone on their return to their homeland,” he said. “I want to thank you for your loyalty to the oath, your duty and your homeland, which has never forgotten you for a minute.”
Russia received several spies including Anna and Artem Dultsev, a couple posing as Argentinian arts dealers arrested in Slovenia, who returned with their two children. Cybercrime kingpin Roman Seleznev and businessman Vladislav Klyushin, convicted of insider trading in the United States, also returned.
But the real prize was Vadim Krasikov, who shot dead Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park in 2019. An elite veteran of the security forces, Krasikov was himself once wanted by Russian authorities for a string of contract killings, but never prosecuted.
In exchange, 16 inmates were sprung from Russian jails.
They included the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, recently sentenced to 16 years for spying; artist Sasha Skochilenko, handed seven years for swapping price tags in a supermarket with antiwar messages; former US Marine Paul Whelan, held for spying, and Ilya Yashin, sentenced to eight and a half years in December 2022 for spreading “fake news” over massacres in Ukraine allegedly committed by Russian troops.
Among the most prominent prisoners was the well-known opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British citizen sentenced to 25 years for treason for a speech he gave in the United States. Kara-Murza, whose unusual surname of Tatar origin means “Dark Lord” or “Black Prince”, survived two alleged poisoning attempts, leaving him with a rare nerve condition which significantly deteriorated during his imprisonment.
“The latest prisoner swap between Russia, the United States, and other Western countries is monumental for both Russia and the West,” Kimberly St Julian-Varnon, an American historian of Russia and the USSR, told Al Jazeera.
“Now, innocent American and European citizens will be home with their families, and Russian dissidents can hopefully continue their lives and work in safety outside of Russia. It’s also a great win for the Biden administration ahead of the 2024 election.”
But she noted it was also a win for Moscow as “its tactic of hostage diplomacy has paid off”.
“What remains clear is that as long as American citizens continue to travel to Russia for any reason, they are at risk of being imprisoned and used as pawns in Russia’s diplomatic game.”
Russia’s inflammatory former president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram, “Of course, we would like the traitors of Russia to rot in prison or die in jail, as has often happened … But it is more useful to get out our own, who worked for the country, for the Fatherland, for all of us.”
US presidential candidate Donald Trump, who pledged to get Gershkovich released should he be elected, did not celebrate the swap.
“How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash?” he wrote on his social platform Truth Social. “Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us! I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING – and never any cash.”
Bittersweet Russian reactions
Among the Russian opposition there were mixed, bittersweet feelings.
“It’s a joy to see them all out of captivity,” Yulia Navalnaya wrote on Instagram. “Every released political prisoner is a huge victory and a reason to celebrate. No one should be held hostage by Putin, subjected to torture, or left to die in his prisons.”
Her husband, the late Alexey Navalny, perhaps the Kremlin’s most famous critic, died in February while serving a 19-year sentence in an Arctic penal colony. He was reportedly part of an earlier planned swap but died before it could take place.
“Firstly, many today are incredibly happy for those who were exchanged,” Alexey Krapukhin, a member of the liberal party Yabloko, told Al Jazeera. “It is incredibly sad that Navalny did not live to see this exchange. But overall, this exchange does not change anything for the opposition. People will continue to be persecuted for their statements, the repression machine will not stop. Being an oppositionist inside Russia will not become easier. Those who were released, I hope, will again become bright speakers. Only in exile.”
“I am a journalist who has focused on Russia throughout my life,” Dan Storyev, an editor at the Russian human rights monitor OVD-Info, wrote in the Moscow Times. As Evan [Gershkovich] and his fellow reporter Alsu Kurmasheva are safe and sound and on their way back to the US, I feel such deep relief. I feel grateful to their families, Western diplomats and Russian civil society in the West who have tirelessly pushed for this exchange to happen.
“But as I think about it more deeply, I become increasingly pessimistic. It is important to note that the exchanged 16 are but a tiny fraction of Russia’s political prisoner population. My organisation, OVD-Info, counts at least 1,289 dissidents in Russian prisons. At least 10 have died in custody.”
Meanwhile, a few were still sceptical.
Alexander Gabuev, of Carnegie’s Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said that while he welcomed the news of the Russian-held prisoners, “a successful prisoner swap doesn’t herald any breakthroughs in resolving core issues of Russia’s war on Ukraine and standoff with the West. If anything, the confrontation is getting more dangerous. It’s good though that communication channels still work.”
Andrey Volna, a Russian orthopaedic surgeon who left to volunteer at a military hospital in Kyiv, wrote on Facebook: “The fact that no Ukrainian was exchanged makes you think that not all is as it appears … I am afraid there is a secret part of the deal which can only be focused on Russia and the United States.”