Signs of imminent prisoner exchange between Russia and the West multiply

Signs of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Belarus on one side and the United States, Germany and Slovenia on the other, multiplied on Thursday but there was no official confirmation of what may be the biggest swap since the Cold War.

Fox News reported that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was set to return to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange, possibly later on Thursday.

Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap, involving the United States and Russia, had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad which borders Poland and Lithuania before heading back to the Russian capital.

Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association that specialises in defending people in Russian cases of treason and espionage, said the flight could mean that a prisoner exchange had taken place on the Polish border.

Reuters could not confirm that and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about reports of a looming major prisoner exchange, said: “I’m still not making any comments on this.”

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, have suddenly disappeared from view, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly moved from their prisons in recent days.

There were also unconfirmed Russian media reports that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been removed from his Siberian prison.

At least six special Russian government planes have flown in recent days to and from regions where prisons holding dissidents are located, online Russian outlet “Agenstvo” has reported.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian man held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place.” But the lawyer, Arkady Bukh, was quoted by RIA as saying he’d been told by lawyers representing people imprisoned in Russia that they were “en route” to unknown locations.

RIA also reported that four Russians jailed in the United States had disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.

The U.S. is also holding at least two other Russian nationals, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev, convicted of serious cybercrimes, who could figure.

There has been no comment from Western countries. Such exchanges are typically shrouded in secrecy until they happen.

Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, who was convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.

Others to have abruptly gone missing in the prison system include German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik, convicted of treason, opposition activists Liliya Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeeva, and anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko.

Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer now living in Prague who founded Pervy Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggested the authorities were gathering them, probably in Moscow, for the exchange.

He said President Vladimir Putin would need to pardon them before their exchange, a necessary formality. Media outlet “Important Stories” drew attention to the fact that Putin, according to a government website, had signed a number of secret decrees on July 30 which it said could be prisoner pardons.

In December 2022, Russia traded basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S.

The biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War took place in 2010, involving 14 people in total.

WEST SEES DETAINEES AS POLITICAL PRISONERS

In the West, the dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully detained political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.

The exchange is also expected to include two journalists.

On July 19, Gershkovich was convicted unusually swiftly on espionage charges that he denies. He was handed 16 years in jail and Russia has already confirmed talks about his possible exchange.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also convicted in a secret trial the same day and sentenced to 6-1/2 years, accused of spreading false information about the Russian army. She denies wrongdoing.

Other U.S. nationals behind bars in Russia include former schoolteacher Marc Fogel, convicted for possessing marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.

In Belarus, meanwhile, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, on Tuesday pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges, again with unusual haste and state media coverage.

Among those Moscow has signalled it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving life in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.

A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using fake identities, and said they would be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.

Reuters could not independently confirm that.