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Those hoping the deal signifies a defrosting of the fraught relationship between Moscow and Western capitals are likely to be disappointed
Amid the bloodiest war Europe has seen since the Second World War – with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead, wounded, and missing – fragments of good news are scarce indeed. So the release of many prominent prisoners of Putin’s brutal regime in the largest exchange between Russia and the United States since the Cold War – involving 24 captives – will be welcomed by many, especially since the death of imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in February.
As President Biden put it in a briefing at the White House, each prisoner has “endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”
Among the released were several journalists, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and Russian-British Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza. It bears repeating that none of these individuals should ever have been behind bars.
As this paper wrote back in March, no journalist should be detained for simply doing their job. They were victims of the appalling clampdown that has taken place in Russia ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But Moscow always drives a hard bargain. In exchange for the journalists and others wrongly imprisoned, among the released was Vadim Krasikov, a notorious hitman who gunned down a Chechen dissident in Berlin in 2019, and others involved in violent crimes committed on Western soil.
The thought of such criminals being back in Russia’s arms will horrify many, as will the risk it may embolden other unscrupulous regimes. It has been a deliberate strategy of the Kremlin to lock up individuals who make powerful bargaining chips as Western powers arm Kyiv; the fear will be that this will encourage such immoral and illegal tactics elsewhere.
Those hoping the deal signifies a defrosting of the fraught relationship between Moscow and Western capitals are also likely to be disappointed – there has been a long history of prisoner exchanges over the decades, and Ukraine and Russia swap prisoners frequently despite being at war.
That it has happened now speaks to the political reality in the United States, with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump regularly attacking the Democrats for their failure to bring American citizens home. Now they are back. But the comfort of their return could quickly give way to worry over the cost.