MOSCOW: Signs of a major prisoner swap between Russia and Belarus and the United States, Germany, Slovenia and Britain rose on Thursday, but there was no official confirmation of the biggest post-Cold War exchange.
Imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Ivan Gershkovich was scheduled to return to the United States later Thursday as part of a prisoner exchange, Fox News reported.
Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian state-owned plane used for former prisoner exchanges involving the United States and Russia had flown from Moscow to Russia's Kaliningrad region, which borders Lithuania and Poland, before returning to the Russian capital. .
Pervy Otdel (Department I), an association that specializes in defending people in Russian espionage and treason cases, said the flight could mean a prisoner exchange took place at the Polish border. Reuters could not confirm that.
Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both imprisoned in Russia, were suddenly released after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly transferred from their prisons, their lawyers said a day earlier. have disappeared from sight. In recent days.
On Thursday, unconfirmed reports appeared in Russian media that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ustanin, had been released from his Siberian prison and transferred to Moscow.
Russian online media “Agnestov” has reported that at least 6 special planes of the Russian government have flown to the areas where opposition prisons are located in recent days.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian man held in the United States, on Wednesday declined to confirm his client's whereabouts to the state news agency RIA “until the exchange takes place.” But the lawyer, Arkady Bukh, was quoted by RIA as saying that the lawyers of the people imprisoned in Russia had told him that they were “on the way” to unknown places.
RIA also reported that four Russians imprisoned in the United States have disappeared from the inmate database run by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. He named them Vinik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konushchenko and Vladislav Klyushin.
The United States is also detaining at least two other Russian nationals, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Selzenov, who have been convicted of serious cyber crimes.
The Kremlin, like the Russian embassy in Washington, has declined to say whether an exchange is imminent, and there has been no comment from Western countries. Such exchanges are usually shrouded in secrecy until they happen.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told have been moved suddenly in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniel Krinari, who has been convicted of collusion with foreign governments.
Others who have suddenly disappeared into the prison system include Kevin Lake, a German-Russian citizen convicted of treason, opposition activists Lilia Chanisheva and Ksenia Fadieva, and anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko.
Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer who now lives in Prague and founded Peru Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggests authorities are likely rounding them up in Moscow for exchange.
Russian President Vladimir Putin must pardon them before they can be exchanged, a necessary formality, he said. Media “Major Stories” drew attention to the fact that, according to a government website, Putin signed a number of secret decrees on July 30, which he said may be a prisoner amnesty.
In December 2022, Russia swapped basketball star Brittany Greiner, who was sentenced to nine years for having cannabis oil cartridges in her suitcase, for arms dealer Victor Butt, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States. .
The largest prisoner swap since the Cold War took place in 2010, involving a total of 14 people.
West sees the detainees as political prisoners
In the West, governments and activists consider the opposition to be illegal political prisoners. All of them have been identified by Moscow as dangerous extremists for various reasons.
It is also expected that this exchange will include two journalists.
On July 19, Gershkevich was unusually quickly convicted of espionage charges, which he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Russia has already confirmed talk of a possible exchange for him.
Russian-American journalist Alsou Kurmasheva of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was also found guilty in a secret trial on the same day and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian military. became. He denies wrongdoing.
Other US nationals behind bars in Russia include former school teacher Mark Fogel, who was convicted of possessing marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, on Tuesday pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death for terrorism, again with unusual haste and state media coverage.
Among those Moscow has said it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian living in Germany for the murder of an exiled Chechen Georgian dissident in a park in Berlin.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served on charges of espionage and using fake identities and said they would be deported, state news agency STA reported.
Reuters could not independently confirm that.
