MOSCOW: Signs of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Belarus and the United States, Germany, Slovenia and Britain multiplied on Thursday, but there was no official confirmation of what could be the biggest exchange since the Cold War.
Fox News reported that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was expected to return to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange, possibly later Thursday.
Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner exchange involving the United States and Russia flew from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania and Poland, before heading back to the Russian capital.
Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association that specializes in defending people in Russian cases of treason and espionage, said the escape could mean a prisoner exchange took place at the Polish border. Reuters could not confirm this.
Paul Whelan, a former US marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, suddenly disappeared from view, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly evicted from their prisons. in recent days.
On Thursday, there were unconfirmed Russian media reports that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been removed from his Siberian prison and transferred to Moscow.
Online Russian media outlet “Agenstvo” reported that at least six special Russian government planes have flown to and from areas where prisons holding dissidents are located in recent days.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian detained in the United States, on Wednesday refused to confirm his client's whereabouts to the state news agency RIA “until the exchange takes place.” But lawyer Arkady Bukh, quoted by RIA, said lawyers representing those imprisoned 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 the inmate database run by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. She named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
The U.S. is also holding at least two other Russian nationals, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev, convicted of serious cyber crimes who could also figure.
The Kremlin declined to say whether an exchange was imminent, as did the Russian embassy in Washington and Western countries did not comment. Such exchanges are usually shrouded in secrecy until they happen.
Dissidents in Russia whose supporters say they have been told they have been moved suddenly in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, who was convicted of colluding with foreign governments.
Others who suddenly disappeared into the prison system include German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik, 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 suggests authorities are rounding them up, possibly in Moscow, for exchange.
He said President Vladimir Putin would have to pardon them before they could be exchanged, a necessary formality. The “Important Stories” media drew attention to the fact that Putin signed a series of secret decrees on July 30, which he said could be pardons for prisoners, according to a government website.
In December 2022, Russia swapped basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for carrying cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence in the US.
The largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place in 2010 and involved a total of 14 people.
THE WEST SEES THESE AS POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the West, dissidents are considered by governments and activists to be unjustly detained political prisoners. All of them were labeled as dangerous extremists by Moscow for various reasons.
Two journalists are also expected to attend the exchange.
On July 19, Gershkovich was unusually quickly convicted on espionage charges, which he denies. He received 16 years in prison, and Russia has already confirmed negotiations for his possible exchange.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Svoboda, was also convicted the same day in a secret trial and sentenced to 6-1/2 years, accused of spreading false information about the Russian military. He denies guilt.
Other American citizens behind bars in Russia include former teacher Marc Fogel, convicted of possession of marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, on Tuesday, again with unusual haste and state media, pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges.
Among those Moscow has indicated it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering a Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using false identities and said they would be deported, state news agency STA reported, a move that a Slovenian television channel described as part of a wider exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm this.
