US-Russia prisoner swap causes blowback in Germany, Poland

BERLIN — A day after a historic prisoner swap, Germans are grappling with mixed feelings.

In one of the biggest and most complex prisoner swaps since the Cold War, two dozen Americans, Germans and Russian dissidents were released in exchange for eight Russians imprisoned in five different countries.

Among the Americans released was Evan Gershkovich, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal. He’d been arrested in Russia on flimsy allegations of spying, and was recently sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The main prize for Moscow was Vadim Krasikov, a Kremlin-connected colonel in Russia’s secret service who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for killing a Chechen dissident in a public Berlin park during broad daylight in 2019.

“Nobody took lightly this decision to deport a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years in prison,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said while waiting for those freed to arrive at the airport in Cologne Thursday evening.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock referred in a radio interview to Thursday’s large-scale prisoner swap as a “highly sensitive dilemma” that “rightly leads to much, much need for conversation.”

The family of the murdered dissident felt “disappointed” and found the decision “incomprehensible,” Inga Schulz, the lawyer who represented them during trial, told POLITICO.

“The family would have liked to have been involved in at least one conversation beforehand,” Schulz said. She added that they are, however, “happy about every life that can be saved.”

The deal caused blowback in Poland, too, as the government came under fire by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party for not including Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish journalist imprisoned in Belarus — a country allied with Russia.

As part of the exchange, Poland did release Pavel Rubtsov — also known as Pablo Gonzales, a Spanish-Russian journalist. He had been arrested in February 2022 near the border with Ukraine and was accused of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Mariusz Kamiński, the former coordinator of special services under the past PiS administration, wrote on X that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government “gave away their most valuable agent to the Russians without getting anything in return.”

Whether Poland received any direct quid pro quo is unclear; however, the U.S. is one of Poland’s closest political and military allies.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin welcomes Russian citizens released in a major prisoner swap. | POOL photo by Sergei Ilyin/AFP via Getty Images

In Germany, human rights organizations and opposition politicians argued that freeing a convicted murderer in exchange for political prisoners provides extra leverage to the Russian regime.

“This could set a precedent,” Roderich Kiesewetter, a senior defense politician from the opposition party Christian Democratic Union, told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook. “I fear that the risk of sabotage or terrorism by Russia will increase,” he said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown his henchmen have no reason to fear consequences.

The German government did not commute Krasikov’s sentence. Rather, in a historic first, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann instructed the public prosecutor to suspend Krasikov’s sentence for deportation — meaning he could be immediately arrested if he reentered Germany, a spokesperson from the justice ministry said.

Convincing Scholz to agree on releasing Krasikov was the biggest obstacle for Washington in getting the deal done, according to a U.S. official who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely.

Germany was initially only willing to release Krasikov in return for jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, according to Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian investigative journalist who helped uncover Krasikov’s true identity to investigators in Berlin.

When Navalny died at the beginning of this year, Grozev said in a CNN interview, “It was very difficult for [the deal] to be revived.”

Germany only continued pursuing a deal under condition of a much higher price to Putin: eight prisoners instead of one, Grosev explained.

That included German Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death in Belarus.

Jan Cienski reported from Warsaw. Hans von der Burchard contributed reporting from Berlin.