Jailed U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among 26 prisoners from the United States, Russia and a number of their allies being freed in a major exchange on Thursday, Turkey’s presidency said.
It said 10 prisoners, including two minors, had been moved to Russia, 13 to Germany and three to the United States. Also involved in the swap were Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Belarus.
Turkish intelligence had announced earlier that it was coordinating an extensive prisoner exchange, signaling a major swap between Russia and the United States was underway.
“Our organization has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.
Both the Kremlin and the White House had declined to comment when asked about a possible exchange.
The exchange was the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War. In the last major exchange in 2010, 14 prisoners were exchanged.
In December 2022, Russia traded U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S.
Among those included in Thursday’s swap was Vadim Krasikov, a colonel in the Russian FSB security service serving life in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park, whom President Vladimir Putin had indicated he wanted back.
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Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death in Belarus on terrorism charges, was pardoned on Tuesday by President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally. He was also among those released, along with Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, Turkey said.
Reuters footage showed a Russian government plane on the ground in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, had suddenly disappeared from view in recent days, according to their lawyers. At least seven Russian dissidents had been unexpectedly moved from their prisons.
A lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place.”
RIA had also reported that four Russians jailed in the United States had disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
In the West, the dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully detained political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using fake identities, and said they would be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.
