Prisoner movements in Russia fan speculation of impending swap

Russia watchers have been glued to their screens as evidence appears to be mounting of a potentially historic prisoner exchange with, among other countries, the United States.

Rumors of an imminent swap have surged since Sunday after a number of high-profile Russian political prisoners were reported missing from detention centers and prisons throughout the country.

Russian prison authorities have remained tight-lipped, offering lawyers and relatives only crumbs of information about the supposed transfer of the inmates in question, without specifying a destination or reason for the move.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the list of those who have mysteriously disappeared off the grid included roughly a dozen names, with some of Russia’s best known political prisoners among them.

They include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, Oleg Orlov, the co-founder of the rights organization Memorial; artist Sasha Skochilenko; and two former employees of the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny: Ksenia Fadeyeva and Lilia Chanysheva.

Former U.S. marine Paul Whelan is also among those who’ve gone missing in Russia’s penal system.

The whereabouts of dual citizens Russian-British Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza and Russian-German Kevin Lik are similarly unclear.

Notably, there has been no news on the two names most frequently mentioned in connection to a possible prisoner swap; that of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter jailed in Russia on espionage charges, and Vadim Krasikov, the assassin for Russia’s FSB security service, who is serving time in Germany, whom Putin has openly hinted he wants to swap him for.

Any swap, especially a collective one, would provide an extraordinarily rare moment of alignment between Russia and its geopolitical foes in the West amid Cold War-era tension over the war in Ukraine.

It would also be a boon to the administration of President Joe Biden and the Democrats ahead of what is already a rollercoaster and polarizing American election.

The Kremlin has made no secret of its feelings towards the Democrats and it is unlikely to want to offer it any freebies. But there are reasons why Putin, a pragmatist pur sang, would be interested in conducting the exchange now.

With its own citizens behind bars in various Western countries, the process of getting them released is complex and sensitive — and one the Kremlin might be loathe to entrust to Republican candidate Donald Trump, with his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to deal-making.

Trump has repeatedly bragged about his plans to secure Evan Gershkovich’s release if he were elected. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

“Putin was also interested in a pre-election deal, since after then, the extremely painstaking preparatory work, involving several countries, could have been undone,” political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya speculated.

Trump has repeatedly bragged about his plans to secure Gershkovich’s release if he were elected, writing in May that “Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!”

It wouldn’t be surprising if the Kremlin considered “nothing” a rather bad offer.

Aside from the mysterious disappearances, a number of other, seemingly separate events over the past days have fuelled suspicion that something important is brewing.

On Tuesday, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in a surprise move, pardoned Rico Krieger, a German citizen and the first Westerner to receive a death sentence.

A day later, on Wednesday, Slovenia convicted a Russian couple of espionage, and ordered them to be expelled.

In a third notable event, a number of high-profile Russian citizens held in U.S. prisons, many of them linked to the Russian government, appeared to have been removed from the American federal prisoner database.

Among them were Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok, Vladislav Klyushin, Roman Seleznev, and Alexander Vinnik, who are all serving time in U.S. prisons on various serious charges.

Speaking to Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti, Vinnik’s lawyer neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of a prisoner swap involving his client, saying he could not comment on it “until it takes place.”

Though expressing hope at the prospect some of Russia’s most famous political prisoners might walk free, many critics of Putin also voiced caution that the disappearances could be part of a Kremlin ruse.

But, with Russian state media and propagandists jumping on the news on Wednesday, all the signs appear to be pointing the opposite way.

Without providing evidence, Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, speculated on Telegram the swap would involve the United States, Germany, Belarus and Slovenia. The Slovenian website N1 reported that same information on an impending deal.

If so, the swap would be unique in its geographical scope and, presumably, in the number of political prisoners exchanged simultaneously with the West.

“In the modern history of Russia this has never happened before,” wrote Еva Merkacheva, a prominent Russian prison expert on Tuesday.