MOSCOW: Signs of a major prisoner swap between Russia and Belarus on the one hand and the United States, Germany, Slovenia and Britain on the other increased on Thursday, but there was no official confirmation of what could be the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War.
Fox News reported that imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was expected to return to the United States later Thursday as part of a prisoner exchange.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap between the United States and Russia flew from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, on the border with Lithuania and Poland, before heading back to the Russian capital.
Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association specializing in defending people in Russian cases of treason and espionage, said the flight could mean that a prisoner exchange had taken place at the Polish border. Reuters could not confirm this.
Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both imprisoned in Russia, suddenly disappeared from the scene, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly transferred from their prisons in recent days.
On Thursday, there were unconfirmed Russian media reports that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been released from his Siberian prison and transferred to Moscow.
The Russian online media company “Agenstvo” reported that in recent days at least six special Russian government aircraft have flown to and from regions where prisons for dissidents are located.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Russian Alexander Vinnik, who is being held in the United States, refused on Wednesday to confirm his client's whereabouts to state news agency RIA “until the exchange is made.” The lawyer, Arkady Buch, was quoted by RIA as saying that lawyers representing people detained in Russia had told him they were “on their way” to unknown locations.
RIA also reported that four Russians imprisoned in the United States had disappeared from a US Bureau of Prisons prisoner database. They are Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
In addition, the US is detaining at least two other Russian citizens: Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev. Both have been convicted of serious cybercrimes and could also be targeted.
The Kremlin has not commented on whether an exchange is imminent, nor has the Russian embassy in Washington. There was no comment from Western countries either. Such exchanges are usually kept secret until they take place.
Among the dissidents in Russia whose supporters say they learned of a sudden relocation of their seat in recent days are opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, who was convicted of secret collaboration with foreign governments.
Other people who have suddenly disappeared from the prison system include German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik, who was convicted of high treason, opposition activists Liliya Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeeva, and anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko.
Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer who now lives in Prague and founded Pervy Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggested that authorities had rounded them up, probably in Moscow, for exchange.
He said President Vladimir Putin would have to pardon them before the exchange, a necessary formality. The Important Stories media outlet pointed out that Putin signed a series of secret decrees on July 30 that could be prisoner pardons, according to a government website.
In December 2022, Russia exchanged basketball star Brittney Griner, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison for carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States.
In 2010, the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place, involving a total of 14 people.
The West considers prisoners as political prisoners
In the West, the dissidents are viewed by governments and activists as wrongfully imprisoned political prisoners. All of them have been classified by Moscow as dangerous extremists for various reasons.
Two journalists are also expected to take part in the exchange.
On July 19, Gershkovich was convicted unusually quickly on espionage charges, which he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Russia has already confirmed talks about his possible exchange.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in a secret trial on the same day. She was accused of spreading false information about the Russian army. She denies any wrongdoing.
Other U.S. citizens behind bars in Russia include former teacher Marc Fogel, who was convicted of possession of marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, pardoned German Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death for terrorism, on Tuesday – again with unusual haste and with special coverage in the state media.
Among those sought by Moscow is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian who is serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to prison terms already served for espionage and using false identities and announced their deportation, the state news agency STA reported. A Slovenian television station said the move was part of a wider exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm this.
