MOSCOW/ANKARA (Reuters)—Jailed U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among two dozen detainees from the United States, Russia, and a number of their allies freed on Thursday in the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War.
The White House said the United States had negotiated the complex trade with Russia and other countries. It said eight prisoners held in the West were being sent back to Russia.
Germany confirmed that they included Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murdering an exiled dissident in Berlin.
Turkey, which coordinated the exchange, said 10 prisoners, including 2 minors, had been moved to Russia, 13 to Germany and 3 to the United States. Also involved in the swap were Poland, Slovenia, Norway, and Belarus.
"After the completion of the ratification procedures of the parties, the health checks ... the prisoners were placed on the planes of the countries to which they would be travelling with the approval and instructions of the MIT," the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.
It said it had authorised the return of the aircraft.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not specifically confirm a swap but was quoted by the state news agency TASS as saying that, in principle, "all our enemies should stay there (abroad), and all those who are not our enemies should return."
In the last major exchange in 2010, 14 prisoners were exchanged.
In December 2022, Russia traded U.S. 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.
Krasikov is a colonel in the Russian FSB security service who was serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park. President Vladimir Putin had indicated he wanted him back.
Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death in Belarus on terrorism charges, was pardoned on Tuesday by President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally. He was also among those released, along with Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, Turkey said.
RUSSIAN DISSIDENTS HAD DISAPPEARED FROM VIEW
Reuters footage showed a Russian government plane on the ground in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, had suddenly disappeared from view in recent days, according to their lawyers. At least seven Russian dissidents had been unexpectedly moved from their prisons.
A lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian 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".
RIA had 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.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
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.
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.
WSJ editor in chief Emma Tucker posted an open letter on the X platform that read: "Today is a joyous day for the safe return of our colleague Evan Gershkovich, who left a Russian aircraft moments ago in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, as part of a prisoner swap with Russia ...
"We are grateful to President Biden and his administration for working with persistence and determination to bring Evan home rather than see him shipped off to a Russian work camp for a crime he didn’t commit."
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Filipp Lebedev and Lucy Papachristou in London, Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Writing by Andrew Osborn and Kevin Liffey; Editing by Ros Russell and Jon Boyle)