Prisoner Swap: Who was released by Russia and the West?

A major prisoner exchange took place at Esenboğa Airport in Ankara, Turkey, involving Russia and Belarus on one side and the United States, Germany, Slovenia, Norway, and Poland on the other.

A total of 26 individuals — 24 adults and two minors — were part of the historic swap, the largest of its kind since the Cold War.

Russia released 15 prisoners with another from Belarus in exchange for 8 Russians held in the West. Of the released individuals, ten were relocated to Russia, 13 to Germany, and three to the U.S.

Who have Russia and Belarus released?

Andrei Pivovarov

Andrei Pivovarov, 42, former head of opposition group Open Russia, outlawed in 2021. On May 31, 2021, he was removed from a flight between St. Petersburg and Warsaw and detained at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.

He was convicted of carrying out activities for an "undesirable" organization and sentenced to four years in prison and banned from engaging in social and political activities, including using the internet, for eight years. The charges were based on Facebook posts he had made.

Ilya Yashin

Ilya Yashin, a former member of a Moscow municipal council, was one of the few well-known opposition activists to stay in Russia since the conflict in Ukraine. 

He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army, marking the strictest penalty under this charge at the time. In total, Yashin faced four charges for discrediting the Russian army.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, dual Russian-U.K. citizen and opposition political activist and publicist. He was convicted in 2023 of treason and other charges, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

He fell ill in 2015 and 2017 from near-fatal poisonings he blamed on the authorities, claims which the Kremlin said were without evidence. His wife said his health deteriorated in prison as a result of the poisonings.

Kara-Murza also wrote columns for the Washington Post from his prison cell, which won him the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2024.

Oleg Orlov

Oleg Orlov, 71, a human rights veteran and a co-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial, which advocated for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression in the USSR, in 1988.

In 1995, he negotiated with militants led by Shamil Basayev during the Budyonnovsk attack at a hospital, eventually becoming a surrendering himself to the gunmen to guarantee the agreements reached in exchange for the release of most hostages.

On February 27, 2024, the court found Orlov guilty of discrediting the army, following an article he had written, and sentenced him to 2.5 years in prison.

Kevin Lik

Kevin Lik, 19, is the youngest participant in the exchange (excluding the two children of Artem and Anna Dultsev). Lik is a citizen of Russia and Germany; he was convicted of treason and sentenced to four years in prison.

According to the investigation, while still a minor, he conducted visual surveillance and photographed the locations of Russian troops in Maykop, then sent the photographs to representatives of a foreign state.

Sasha Skochilenko

Alexandra ("Sasha") Skochilenko, 33, is an artist. According to the investigation, on March 31, she distributed false information about the Russian army in a supermarket chain — Skochilenko had swapped out the price tags of goods with messages about civilians killed in the shelling of the Mariupol Drama Theater.

The investigator deemed the information distributed to be false and motivated by political hatred. Russia's Investigative Committee claimed that Skochilenko "was aware of the real state of affairs in the theater of military operations." She was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Ksenia Fadeyeva, Lilia Chanysheva, Vadim Ostanin

Fadeyeva, 32, Ostanin, 47, Chanysheva, 42, are former coordinators of regional offices of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny. They were arrested after Navalny's political network was outlawed in 2021 and later convicted of extremism. Fadeyeva and Ostanin each were sentenced to nine years in prison, and Chanysheva got a nine and a half years term.

Alsu Kurmasheva

Alsu Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old U.S.-Russian citizen, worked as a journalist for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and lived in Prague, Czechia.

In May 2023, Kurmasheva traveled to Russia for family reasons. On June 2, as she attempted to fly back to Czechia, she was detained at Kazan airport. She was accused of not registering as a "foreign agent" and was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military — charges rejected by her family and employer. Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.

Rico Krieger

Rico Krieger was detained in Belarus in 2023. It was alleged that Krieger entered Belarus in October 2023 under the guise of a tourist while actually on assignment from the Ukrainian security services. He purportedly retrieved an improvised explosive device from a cache and placed it on railroad tracks on October 5. The explosion caused an estimated $516 in damage, though no one was injured.

Krieger was sentenced to death in Belarus as he faced six charges: illegal actions with weapons, rendering transport or communication routes unusable, creation of or participation in an extremist formation, agent activity, mercenary activity, and an act of terrorism.

On July 30, Krieger appealed to Alexander Lukashenko for a pardon, which was granted. Krieger was the first Westerner ever sentenced to death in Belarus.

Herman Moyzhes 

Herman Moyzhes, a dual Russian-German national, is a cycling activist and a migration lawyer who helped Russians apply for European Union residence permits, according to AP. He was arrested in May in St. Petersburg. A subsequent search linked to the case cited a treason investigation although he had not been charged by the time of his release.

Demuri (Dieter) Voronin

Demuri Voronin, 45, a political scientist, a citizen of both Russia and Germany. 

He was arrested in 2021, convicted of treason in 2023 and sentenced to 13 years and three months in prison. He was accused of passing classified information about the Russian Armed Forces' activities in Syria to German intelligence and the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Evan Gershkovich

Evan Gershkovich, 32, is a Wall Street Journal reporter. He was arrested in March 2023 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, where he flew to interview Public Relations expert Yaroslav Shirshikov about public attitudes towards recruitment for the Wagner Group.

According to the prosecution, Gershkovich acted on the instructions of the CIA to collect classified information on the activities of the defense enterprise Uralvagonzavod related to military equipment production and repair in March 2023 in the Sverdlovsk region. He was charged with espionage and sentenced to 16 years.

Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal, and the White House all denied he was a spy or had ever worked for the U.S. government. President Joe Biden called his detention "totally illegal" and the United States designated him as "wrongfully detained."

Paul Whelan

Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and later head of security at the auto parts firm BorgWarner, was arrested in Moscow in 2018 when he flew to Russia for the wedding of a former colleague. In June 2020, he was found guilty of espionage against Russia and sentenced to 16 years in a strict regime colony. He pleaded not guilty.

Patrick Schoebel

Patrick Schoebel, 38, a German national who was detained on February 14, 2024, upon arriving at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport from Istanbul. During an inspection of his luggage, authorities found a pack of "Fink Green Goldbears" with packaging that featured a marijuana leaf image.

Schoebel faced a criminal case for drug smuggling — an offense that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in Russia. He was awaiting the conclusion of the trial at the time of his exchange.

Who has the West released?

Vadim Krasikov

Vadim Krasikov, 58, served in the FSB special forces "Alpha." He was convicted in 2021 of the deadly shooting of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity in a Berlin park. Russia's president Putin had publicly called Khangoshvili a terrorist although there was no public trial or evidence provided.

The German judges concluded it was an assassination ordered by the Russian security services. Krasikov was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Artem Dultsev, Anna Dultseva

Spouses Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who were living in Slovenia posing as Argentine citizens Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muñoz, were detained in Ljubljana in late 2022 on espionage charges. They were sentenced to 19 months in prison.

"Maria" claimed to be an art gallery owner. The police identified them by comparing the fingerprints of couple with those of their assumed identities, which were in the possession of Interpol. On the eve of the prisoner swap, they pleaded guilty.

Roman Seleznev

Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian lawmaker, was sentenced in the United States to 27 years in prison for computer fraud and identity theft, marking the largest penalty for cybercrime in U.S. history. Prosecutors described him as "one of the most revered hackers in the criminal world." They estimated the total damage from Seleznev's actions to exceed $169 million.

Vladislav Klyushin

Vladislav Klyushin, a businessman, was found guilty of insider trading and sentenced to nine years in prison by a court in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2023.

Klyushin was arrested in Switzerland in March 2021 and later extradited to the U.S. He was accused of participating in a scheme that involved the illegal use of confidential information for financial gain in the securities market. According to the indictment, the insider trading scheme, orchestrated outside the U.S., generated $93 million in profits.

Mikhail Mikushin

In May 2022, a court in Norway charged an employee of the Arctic University of Tromsø with espionage and published his full name. The spy turned out to be Mikhail Mikushin, born August 19, 1978. He posed as Brazilian citizen José Assis Giammaria, born in 1984.

Vadim Konoshchenok

Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected officer in Russia's Federal Security Service, was extradited to the United States from Estonia last year to face charges he smuggled ammunition and dual-use technology to help the military campaign against Ukraine. U.S. prosecutors say he was detained in 2022 while trying to return to Russia from Estonia with about three dozen types of semiconductors and electronic components.

According to U.S. investigators, the items smuggled included advanced electronics and sophisticated testing equipment intended for use in nuclear weapons development and other military and space-based applications.

Pavel Rubtsov

Pavel Rubtsov, also known as Pablo Gonzalez, worked as a journalist for Spanish media. He was arrested on espionage charges in eastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border, in the first days after Russia's full-scale attack in 2022.

Poland's Internal Security Agency identified him as a Russian intelligence agent, although some rights groups criticized Warsaw for holding him for more than two years without charge, and Reporters Without Borders called for his release.

It was alleged that he used his status as a journalist to gather information for Russian intelligence services. Among other things, Gonzalez was accused of gathering intelligence in Ukraine and attempted to gain the trust of Russian opposition activists.

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