long road to prisoner

A notorious Russian assassin and an American newspaper reporter boarded separate planes in Turkey on Thursday, marking the culmination of a secret, dramatic prisoner swap deal between Russia and the West that has been years in the making.

The origins of the agreement involving more than two dozen prisoners date back to 2022. And it’s getting worse.

These negotiations are sometimes intense and testing. At the same time, tensions between the United States and Russia have increased over the war in Ukraine. “This is the culmination of multiple rounds of complex, hard-fought negotiations over many months,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who played a key role in the deal, said shortly after the exchange.

Senior White House officials provided a detailed timeline of events in a conference call with reporters on Thursday, including BBC America’s partner CBS. The first sign that Moscow might be open to a deal would come in the fall of 2022, they said.

The United States and Russia have been negotiating the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested for possessing cannabis oil and sent to a Russian penal colony. Later that year, Griner was eventually released in a high-profile exchange for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

But White House officials said that in those conversations, Russia made it clear that it also wanted to secure the release of killer Vadim Krasikov, who is serving life in Germany for directly ordering the shooting death of a man in a busy Berlin park. life imprisonment.

Sullivan told his German counterpart that Russia was seeking Krasikov’s release and asked Berlin whether it would consider releasing him in exchange for opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is imprisoned in Russia.

Yet Germany is unwilling to release a killer who committed such a brazen murder on its own soil.

While Mr Sullivan did not get a clear answer from Berlin, preliminary talks in 2022 between the United States and Russia and the United States and Germany have paved the way for a larger and more complex agreement reached in recent weeks in Turkey. The hot runway of the airport.

This is because both parties have expressed what they want, at least to some extent. Russia made it clear it wanted Krasikov.

Washington wants not only Navalny but also former Marine Paul Whelan, who was jailed in Russia in 2018 on espionage charges.

Subsequently, the early elements of a potential swap agreement began to take shape, but there is still a long way to go.

In late March 2023, a 31-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter from New Jersey was arrested by Russian intelligence agents while reporting. His detention drew unanimous condemnation from the United States and its allies.

A day later, President Biden directed Mr. Sullivan to work out a deal that would allow him and Mr. Whelan to return home.

The United States is in direct contact with Russia. White House officials said the two sides then formally began communicating, and their respective foreign ministers also spoke on the phone.

But the conversation quickly turned from these top diplomats to the secret intelligence services, which the United States was hesitant to do because Gershkovich was accused of espionage and Washington feared that CIA involvement would only fuel those accusations.

Senior White House officials said that as the wheels of these tense negotiations began to turn in late 2023, the United States came to realize that the release of killer Krasikov was the key to any successful deal. The offer to Russia did not include the 58-year-old assassin. They are always rejected.

Given that Krasikov is imprisoned in Germany rather than the United States, Washington does not have the authority to unilaterally release him. In late 2023 and early January 2024, Sullivan held almost weekly calls with the German foreign minister, trying to convince him to trade Krasikov and meet Russia’s key demands for the deal.

White House officials said any potential deal was absolutely dependent on Germany releasing Krasikov.

Moscow’s position, they say, is ultimately that imprisoned spies should be returned in exchange for Americans accused of espionage.

With this in mind, the United States is working to find more Russian spies in the hands of its allies who could be part of a major deal. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials, diplomats and CIA operatives traveled the world looking for friendly governments willing to release prisoners who fit that description.

In a sign of their success, Russians were released from jails in Poland, Slovenia and Norway on Thursday.

In February this year, German Chancellor Scholtz met with President Biden at the White House. According to accounts provided by White House officials on Thursday, they discussed a swap package that included all the key figures — Krasikov, Navalny, Whelan, Gershkovich.

Russia also sent a positive signal. In early February, Vladimir Putin spoke about Gershkovic in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “I do not rule out the possibility of Mr. Gershkovic returning to his homeland,” he said.

As BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg writesa very public and not-so-subtle signal that Moscow is willing to make a deal.

But on February 16, 2024, just days after Chancellor Scholz’s interview and White House meeting with President Biden, and before any offer was made to Russia, this potential deal collapsed in tragic circumstances.

Alexei Navalny, arguably the most high-profile prisoner who could have been involved in the swap, died in his cell in a Siberian prison at the age of 47. His death was blamed on Putin. Russian authorities said he died of natural causes.

Although Navalny died with little knowledge of the negotiations, Navalny’s colleague Maria Pevchikh publicly stated that he was close to being released in exchange for Krasikov.

BBC News was unable to independently verify her claims at the time. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has publicly denied it is close to a potential deal.

But on Thursday, the White House confirmed it had been working to include Navalny in the deal, ultimately leading to the release from Russian custody of three people who worked with the opposition figure.

Sullivan became visibly emotional as he described the impact of Navalny’s death, saying: “The team feels like the wind has been taken out of our sails.”

In a dramatic coincidence, Gershkovich’s parents met with Sullivan at the White House on the day Navalny’s death was announced.

Recognizing the significance of the news and the risks it poses to these negotiations, he told them the road ahead “will be more bumpy.”

The underlying deal must be restructured, and the United States and Germany must restructure.

Vice President Kamala Harris then held two key meetings to help keep the potential swap on track, a senior administration official told the BBC.

She attended the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, where she stressed the importance of Krasikov’s release to German Chancellor Scholz.

She also met with the prime minister of Slovenia, where two Russian prisoners considered by the United States to be of high concern to Moscow are being held. They were all released on Thursday.

Then in the spring, a new deal that no longer included Navalny took shape at the White House. In June, Berlin agreed to a swap for Krasikov.

“I would do this for you,” Mr. Scholz told President Biden, according to Mr. Sullivan.

The deal has been submitted to Russia.

Moscow responded a few weeks ago, in mid-July, by accepting the terms of the deal and releasing those on the list who were being held in Russian prisons.

But as negotiations enter their final stages and domestic politics weigh in, Biden faces intense pressure within the Democratic Party to end his re-election campaign in November after a poor debate performance.

According to Mr. Sullivan, just an hour before Mr. Biden announced on July 21 that he would not seek re-election, he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart to finalize the prisoner exchange.

As with any high-stakes prisoner exchange, the deal is not guaranteed, even if planes are lined up and the prisoners’ routes home are determined.

“Until a few hours ago, we were holding our breath and praying,” Sullivan said Thursday afternoon.

President Biden later posted a photo of the freed Americans riding together on a plane bound for U.S. soil, along with a brief caption. “[They] They are safe, free, and beginning their journey back into the arms of their families.