The names to know in the historic US-Russia prisoner swap

The United States and Russia participated in the largest prisoner swap since the collapse of the Soviet Union on Aug. 1. The multinational deal, which involved the U.S., Russia, Germany and Turkey, resulted in the release of two dozen people who were held captive; among the most notable individuals released were a pair of American journalists convicted by Russia, as well as an American jailed on espionage charges. 

Who did the United States receive in the prisoner exchange?

The headline name freed by Russia is Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was "taken into Russian custody while on assignment in Yekaterinburg in March of 2023," said CBS News. His arrest was condemned by American officials and the media, and Gershkovich was charged with espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison just days before his release. Now, Gershkovich has been freed from "wrongful imprisonment based on sham accusations and a fake trial as part of an all-out assault on the free press and truth," the Journal's editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement. 

Gershkovich's release caps off a nearly 500-day long effort to have him brought back to the U.S., and he wasn't the only journalist freed; Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was "convicted for violating Russian laws on 'military fakes' in connection with a book she edited about Ukraine," said Reuters. She was sentenced to over six years in prison the same day as Gershkovich. Though she has now been released, the "reasons [for her arrest] have remained stubbornly and baffling unclear," said The Washington Post, as she had only been detained after she "allegedly failed to register her U.S. passport."

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Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, described by the Journal as the "unluckiest American," was also released as part of the deal. Whelan spent more than 2,000 days in Russian custody; he was first arrested in 2018 after Russia claimed he was "caught 'red-handed' in an act of espionage, while Whelan insisted that he was set up and that he was simply a tourist," said USA Today. Despite maintaining his innocence, Whelan was "sentenced to 16 years of hard labor at the end of a closed-door trial." 

Dual Russian-British citizen Vladimir Kara-Murza was additionally freed at the behest of the United States. Kara-Murza had "been imprisoned since 2022 on charges of treason and spreading false information about the military following Russia's war in Ukraine," said NBC News. As with the other cases, he "rejected the charges, claiming he was politically targeted because of his connection with another [Russian President Vladimir] Putin critic."

Several other Russian prisoners, including political prisoners, activists and those with ties to deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were also released by Russia as part of the deal. 

Who did Russia receive in the prisoner exchange? 

Several big-name Russians accused or convicted of various crimes were released back to Russia. The most notable is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian who was "sentenced to life in prison in Germany in 2021 for the brazen assassination of a Chechen separatist fighter in broad daylight in a park in central Berlin in 2019," said The New York Times. The German judge who sentenced Krasikov alleged that the killing had been ordered by Putin and the Russian state, though the Russian president denied this. Krasikov was "on the top of Moscow's list of Russian prisoners it wanted to exchange," said CNN, and the deal going through was reportedly contingent on his release. 

Krasikov wasn't the only high-profile Russian released. Also gaining their freedom were Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a "husband and wife convicted in court in Slovenia of pretending to be Argentinians in order to spy," said Reuters. The couple returned to Russia with their children, and they were reportedly "so deep under cover that their children found out they were Russians only after the flight took off." 

Additional Russians who secured their freedom included Roman Seleznev, a "Russian hacker arrested in the United States and sentenced to 14 years in prison" for cybercrime; Vladislav Klyushin, a "Russian hacker who gained access to private corporate earnings records" in the U.S.; and Vadim Konoshchenok, who was accused of "conspiring to obtain military-grade technologies from U.S. companies for Russia's defense sector," said the Times. In all, eight Russians were released by the West in the prisoner swap.