Latest news with #Carstens
Hindustan Times
11-08-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Just as Russia's Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck
Roger Carstens was rushing across Tel Aviv to meet Roman Abramovich, knowing he would have to ask the White House for forgiveness rather than permission. Twice before, the Biden administration had turned down requests by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs to meet this enigmatic Russian oligarch, one of the handful of people Carstens considered a 'back channel wizard' with the influence to untangle the thorniest diplomatic knots. But in November 2023, when Carstens traveled to Israel to help American families whose loved ones Hamas had taken hostage, a message reached his phone saying Abramovich was also in town. It seemed like an unmissable chance to advance a prisoner swap that could free U.S. citizens jailed in Russia—and at the same time, rescue Vladimir Putin's archnemesis, the Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny. The hostage envoy had been on the ground in six wars but joked the most combat he'd ever seen was wearing a suit and tie in Washington, 'trying to get anything done.' He had a plan to free Navalny and the Americans but the White House didn't think the time was right to move on it. He often joked that he felt like Gulliver, tied down by Lilliputians. His perceived adversaries: senior White House and State Department officials who had been working, albeit more cautiously, toward the same end, and were weighing the geopolitical and moral risks of trading prisoners with Putin. Carstens complained to colleagues he was stuck reporting to decision makers who, in his view, had never been to combat, never smelled cordite and who sat at their desks, offering reasons why his proposals wouldn't work. This time, the former Green Beret wasn't going to give anyone enough time to tell him no. On Nov. 30, he shot off an email to Washington, where the day was still young, saying he was poised to sit with Abramovich. Minutes later, he walked into a hotel chosen for the meeting. Sitting opposite, the billionaire said he could see prisoner talks—between the Central Intelligence Agency and Russia's FSB spy service—were stalled. 'I'm not sure the FSB is passing on our messages,' Carstens said. He reiterated the latest offer from the White House: a mix of prisoners that included neither Navalny—whom Germany wanted—nor Russia's own must-have, an FSB officer named Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for murdering a Putin opponent in downtown Berlin. Carstens felt that proposal was never going to fly. 'But let me run another idea by you,' he ventured, 'Not officially, but just to get your view.' Carstens pitched an idea he called 'enlarging the problem.' Germany would free Krasikov, if Russia freed Navalny. As an add-on, the U.S. and European allies could return various deep-cover sleeper spies in their possession, and Russia would release two Americans held on espionage charges the U.S. government strongly denied: former Marine Paul Whelan, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. It sounded intriguing, Abramovich said, but added that he couldn't imagine Putin would free Navalny. After 30 minutes, Carstens left, reopening his phone to see cascading messages ordering him not to hold the meeting. A few days later, Carstens heard back from Abramovich, who seemed as surprised as anybody. Putin, he said, was willing to free Navalny. That same week, guards bundled the 47-year-old dissident onto a prison train and locked the door with no word of where he was heading. Hours turned to days as Navalny read the books he'd been allowed to take from the IK-6 prison camp. He couldn't see the towns passing outside, but the train was snaking across the Ural Mountains, then north toward the Arctic Circle to the 'dead railway,' built by political prisoners under Stalin. It took two weeks to reach his ice-covered destination, known as 'Polar Wolf.' 'I am your new Santa Claus,' he wrote in his first letter home to his wife, Yulia. 'Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful German shepherds.' A few weeks after he arrived, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz logged on to a private videoconference with Joe Biden, officially to discuss the war in Ukraine. Unofficially, the prisoner trade was on the agenda. Hours earlier, the Journal's editor in chief, Emma Tucker, had met with Scholz's top aides in Switzerland. Biden had just met Paul Whelan's sister, Elizabeth, a portrait painter who struck up an easy rapport with the president. Sullivan had been in constant contact with his opposite number in Berlin ahead of the meeting. The idea was so delicate Scholz was too nervous to mention specifics over the call. 'I will fly to see you,' Scholz said. 'I would be happy to.' The chancellor traveled without telling his own cabinet, giving such short notice that the only plane the German government could book was a medium-haul Airbus A321, which had to refuel in Iceland. There were no aides and no note-takers in the Feb. 9 meeting, just Biden and Scholz. Hours earlier, Tucker Carlson aired an interview with Putin at the Kremlin, where the former Fox host pushed the Russian president to release Gershkovich. Putin, chastened by Carlson, looked embarrassed. The pieces all seemed to be clicking into place. In the Oval Office, Scholz agreed to free the assassin Krasikov as the centerpiece of a broader deal. The chancellor would rescue Navalny from his Arctic prison—and, he hoped, boost the aging U.S. president's chances in what was certain to be a bruising re-election campaign. 'For you, I will do this,' Scholz told Biden. Black motorcades On Feb. 15, 2024, the narrow streets of Munich were lined with black motorcades delivering the West's most important leaders to the Bavarian city's annual security conference. Carstens wasn't registered as a speaker or panelist, but he quietly slipped out of Washington on a red-eye flight bound for Germany. By now, the administration was accelerating the Navalny trade toward completion, but preferred to keep Carstens on the periphery of any Russia prisoner talks. Christo Grozev was already there, waiting anxiously in a cafe close to the venue's security perimeter. The Bulgarian investigative journalist and spy-hunter felt the deal was almost done, yet he and Carstens wanted to be as close as possible to the West's top security officials to spot-check that nothing would derail it. Odessa Rae, the 'Navalny' film producer, was texting from Dubai in route to Ukraine after meeting their Russian contact, Stanislav Petlinsky. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying in on Air Force Two, officially to deliver a keynote address, while more quietly representing Biden at a meeting with Slovenian leaders to confirm the trade could include two Russian sleeper spies in their custody: a married couple posing as Argentine nationals. Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was at the conference, and still uneasy about the moral line her country was inching toward, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet her and soothe any concerns. Navalny's wife, Yulia, was also in Munich, on hand to address lingering doubts. Next to Grozev, messaging contacts to try to piece together the state of play, was Maria Pevchikh, Navalny's friend and head of investigations. Their location felt ominous. Seventeen years earlier, at the same Munich gathering, Russia's president delivered a speech castigating the world order in which America was 'one master, one sovereign,' a diatribe considered the starting gun of his war against the West. Now, within touching distance of the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Soviet collapse, the memory of that speech was like a specter. As the evening wrapped toward a close, Pevchikh raised a question, like a terrible premonition: 'What if they kill him?' After years studying Russian intelligence services, Grozev was confident her concern wouldn't come to pass. There was a protocol, he reassured her, a methodology for prison swaps upheld since the Cold War. The Journal even had prewritten articles, ready to go, the moment Navalny walked free. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray was sitting down for lunch with the chiefs of Britain's MI6 and Germany's BND intelligence agency. Their discreet and thankless work was about to pay off in the very real gift of freedom not only for Navalny but also for Gershkovich, whose reporting Wray admired. But as the meal unfolded, dignitaries began reaching for their phones, buzzing with news from Russia. The most powerful security czars in the Western alliance turned to each other in horror and bewilderment. 'Alexei Navalny has died in prison,' the Kremlin's state newswire announced. 'The cause of death is being established.' The guests rose one by one to start fielding calls. Wray rushed upstairs to confer with Blinken. America's top diplomat immediately shot back: 'Get me Yulia.' An aide struggled to reach Navalny's wife and came back with the number for Grozev. Weaving through the tightly controlled security cordons, European and American officials were scrambling to find each other and confer on what would happen next. The news spread through the hallways and coffee line where a German diplomat blurted out in full earshot of reporters, 'Oh no! We were working on getting him out!' Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reacts as she speaks during the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 16, 2024. Grozev guided Navalny's ashen-faced widow through the hotel gates to the secretary of state's suite. The two embraced, then sat down, and Yulia delivered a powerful message: Putin must be punished for the misery he has wrought. Minutes later she walked down toward the lectern in the shellshocked conference hall with delegates standing to applaud, or crying in their seats, her eyes filled with tears and righteous anger. 'I want Putin, his entourage, Putin's friends, and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, and my husband,' she said. Chancellor Scholz wanted to see Yulia but wasn't sure if the woman who had minutes earlier discovered she was a widow would want time with her family. 'I want to meet,' she responded and arrived, somehow still composed, in the hotel suite where the chancellor was waiting. 'I have one request,' Yulia said, before turning to the question of Krasikov. 'Do not release that man.' Across the world, the secret club of people who had labored at organizing an exchange were reeling as its one necessary component was lying dead in an Arctic morgue. Officials across the West had worked for months to free not just Navalny but a growing list of Americans seized by the Kremlin as bargaining chips. CIA officers and their European partners had hunted down Russian spies undercover in an Arctic research institute, the front lines of Ukraine and the suburbs of an Alpine capital. The Justice Department had extradited Russian cybercriminals arrested in the Maldives and on a Swiss mountainside helipad—high-wire legal and diplomatic maneuvers that had given the U.S. trading stock for an exchange that was now on ice. In Los Angeles, Journal publisher Almar Latour was visiting a museum exhibit of art made by prisoners from Soviet gulags, and wondering if a dark gray pencil sketch was drawn in the same camp as Navalny, when his phone rang. It was Carstens, who had landed in Munich just in time to learn it was all for nought. The U.S. could have brought Navalny back alive if it had acted with more urgency, Carstens said. 'If only I had moved faster.' The special envoy was blaming himself for not putting more pressure on the White House. 'We could have wrapped this up in August!' Rae, on her way to Ukraine, was boarding a flight, talking to a fellow passenger about her film, neither of them aware until she glanced at her phone that its subject, her friend, had just died. In Russia's IK-17 labor camp, Paul Whelan was trading cigarettes to place a call to his family: 'If they are willing to kill Navalny they could do something to me. Poison me. Break my leg?' His sister Elizabeth was quizzing a case officer on Carstens's staff over text messages about the consequences of a death she was sure wasn't an accident. The IK-17 Penal Colony, where American Paul Whelan was transferred to serve a 16-year sentence on espionage charges he and the U.S. government denied. Recalibration Jake Sullivan was on his office sofa when a delegation from The Wall Street Journal stepped in. Their meeting, pre-scheduled, was meant to deliver good news, but word of Navalny's death, hours earlier, lent it the air of a wake. Sullivan had a habit of looking toward the floor, or to one side, as he carefully deliberated the angles of a problem. After a long pause, he spoke: 'I never thought a deal with Navalny would work.' But he also hadn't expected Putin to kill him, and still wasn't sure if he would ever know the truth behind the dissident's death. Navalny's supporters had lost everything—the man they were trying to save and Russia's dreams for a democratic future. And the Journal, whose reporter, Gershkovich, had now spent 323 days in the Moscow jail where Stalin's henchman once executed purged officials, was no closer to freeing him than in the first hours of his arrest. But in the cloud of grief and disorientation, the national security adviser could also glimpse a new possibility. Germany had crossed the psychological threshold of agreeing to free a murderer—and perhaps they would accept other political prisoners in Navalny's place. The question hanging over that analysis was whether Putin had come to the same fatal conclusion. In the weeks to come, CIA officials would fly to meet their Russian counterparts in Saudi hotels, booked under false names, carrying eyes-only hard-copy lists of prisoners the West could trade with the Kremlin. The world would finally see the fruits of their labor when, on Aug. 1, 2024 six planes delivered 24 prisoners and two children to an exchange point outside a Turkish air terminal, a mix of Russian spies, hackers, cybercriminals—and Krasikov—traded for Russian dissidents, German convicts, and Americans including Whelan, Gershkovich, and other journalists. That trade, the largest East-West swap in modern history, would cement a cold, inescapable fact about the emerging world order: taking and trading prisoners, and bending the justice system to do it, is now what powerful countries do, a transactional order of statecraft encapsulated by Navalny's arrest, the campaign to free him, and his tragic death. For now, however, looking up from his office couch, Sullivan engaged the Journal without offering false hope. The newspaper's lawyers had brought Gershkovich's mother, Ella Milman, and she was looking right at him, asking: 'Doesn't this create more urgency to free Evan?' 'It might,' he said. 'It's not a breaking point,' he added. 'We will get this done. I see a pathway.' Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson are leaders on The Wall Street Journal's World Enterprise Team. This piece is adapted from their new book, 'Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,' which will be published on Aug. 19 by HarperCollins (which, like the Journal, is owned by News Corp). Write to Drew Hinshaw at and Joe Parkinson at Just as Russia's Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck
Mint
10-08-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Just as Russia's Most-famous dissident seemed set to go free, tragedy struck
Roger Carstens was rushing across Tel Aviv to meet Roman Abramovich, knowing he would have to ask the White House for forgiveness rather than permission. Twice before, the Biden administration had turned down requests by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs to meet this enigmatic Russian oligarch, one of the handful of people Carstens considered a 'back channel wizard" with the influence to untangle the thorniest diplomatic knots. But in November 2023, when Carstens traveled to Israel to help American families whose loved ones Hamas had taken hostage, a message reached his phone saying Abramovich was also in town. It seemed like an unmissable chance to advance a prisoner swap that could free U.S. citizens jailed in Russia—and at the same time, rescue Vladimir Putin's archnemesis, the Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny. The hostage envoy had been on the ground in six wars but joked the most combat he'd ever seen was wearing a suit and tie in Washington, 'trying to get anything done." He had a plan to free Navalny and the Americans but the White House didn't think the time was right to move on it. He often joked that he felt like Gulliver, tied down by Lilliputians. His perceived adversaries: senior White House and State Department officials who had been working, albeit more cautiously, toward the same end, and were weighing the geopolitical and moral risks of trading prisoners with Putin. Carstens complained to colleagues he was stuck reporting to decision makers who, in his view, had never been to combat, never smelled cordite and who sat at their desks, offering reasons why his proposals wouldn't work. This time, the former Green Beret wasn't going to give anyone enough time to tell him no. On Nov. 30, he shot off an email to Washington, where the day was still young, saying he was poised to sit with Abramovich. Minutes later, he walked into a hotel chosen for the meeting. Sitting opposite, the billionaire said he could see prisoner talks—between the Central Intelligence Agency and Russia's FSB spy service—were stalled. 'I'm not sure the FSB is passing on our messages," Carstens said. He reiterated the latest offer from the White House: a mix of prisoners that included neither Navalny—whom Germany wanted—nor Russia's own must-have, an FSB officer named Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for murdering a Putin opponent in downtown Berlin. Carstens felt that proposal was never going to fly. 'But let me run another idea by you," he ventured, 'Not officially, but just to get your view." Carstens pitched an idea he called 'enlarging the problem." Germany would free Krasikov, if Russia freed Navalny. As an add-on, the U.S. and European allies could return various deep-cover sleeper spies in their possession, and Russia would release two Americans held on espionage charges the U.S. government strongly denied: former Marine Paul Whelan, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. It sounded intriguing, Abramovich said, but added that he couldn't imagine Putin would free Navalny. After 30 minutes, Carstens left, reopening his phone to see cascading messages ordering him not to hold the meeting. A few days later, Carstens heard back from Abramovich, who seemed as surprised as anybody. Putin, he said, was willing to free Navalny. That same week, guards bundled the 47-year-old dissident onto a prison train and locked the door with no word of where he was heading. Hours turned to days as Navalny read the books he'd been allowed to take from the IK-6 prison camp. He couldn't see the towns passing outside, but the train was snaking across the Ural Mountains, then north toward the Arctic Circle to the 'dead railway," built by political prisoners under Stalin. It took two weeks to reach his ice-covered destination, known as 'Polar Wolf." 'I am your new Santa Claus," he wrote in his first letter home to his wife, Yulia. 'Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful German shepherds." A few weeks after he arrived, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz logged on to a private videoconference with Joe Biden, officially to discuss the war in Ukraine. Unofficially, the prisoner trade was on the agenda. Hours earlier, the Journal's editor in chief, Emma Tucker, had met with Scholz's top aides in Switzerland. Biden had just met Paul Whelan's sister, Elizabeth, a portrait painter who struck up an easy rapport with the president. Sullivan had been in constant contact with his opposite number in Berlin ahead of the meeting. The idea was so delicate Scholz was too nervous to mention specifics over the call. 'I will fly to see you," Scholz said. 'I would be happy to." The chancellor traveled without telling his own cabinet, giving such short notice that the only plane the German government could book was a medium-haul Airbus A321, which had to refuel in Iceland. There were no aides and no note-takers in the Feb. 9 meeting, just Biden and Scholz. Hours earlier, Tucker Carlson aired an interview with Putin at the Kremlin, where the former Fox host pushed the Russian president to release Gershkovich. Putin, chastened by Carlson, looked embarrassed. The pieces all seemed to be clicking into place. In the Oval Office, Scholz agreed to free the assassin Krasikov as the centerpiece of a broader deal. The chancellor would rescue Navalny from his Arctic prison—and, he hoped, boost the aging U.S. president's chances in what was certain to be a bruising re-election campaign. 'For you, I will do this," Scholz told Biden. On Feb. 15, 2024, the narrow streets of Munich were lined with black motorcades delivering the West's most important leaders to the Bavarian city's annual security conference. Carstens wasn't registered as a speaker or panelist, but he quietly slipped out of Washington on a red-eye flight bound for Germany. By now, the administration was accelerating the Navalny trade toward completion, but preferred to keep Carstens on the periphery of any Russia prisoner talks. Christo Grozev was already there, waiting anxiously in a cafe close to the venue's security perimeter. The Bulgarian investigative journalist and spy-hunter felt the deal was almost done, yet he and Carstens wanted to be as close as possible to the West's top security officials to spot-check that nothing would derail it. Odessa Rae, the 'Navalny" film producer, was texting from Dubai in route to Ukraine after meeting their Russian contact, Stanislav Petlinsky. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying in on Air Force Two, officially to deliver a keynote address, while more quietly representing Biden at a meeting with Slovenian leaders to confirm the trade could include two Russian sleeper spies in their custody: a married couple posing as Argentine nationals. Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was at the conference, and still uneasy about the moral line her country was inching toward, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet her and soothe any concerns. Navalny's wife, Yulia, was also in Munich, on hand to address lingering doubts. Next to Grozev, messaging contacts to try to piece together the state of play, was Maria Pevchikh, Navalny's friend and head of investigations. Their location felt ominous. Seventeen years earlier, at the same Munich gathering, Russia's president delivered a speech castigating the world order in which America was 'one master, one sovereign," a diatribe considered the starting gun of his war against the West. Now, within touching distance of the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Soviet collapse, the memory of that speech was like a specter. As the evening wrapped toward a close, Pevchikh raised a question, like a terrible premonition: 'What if they kill him?" After years studying Russian intelligence services, Grozev was confident her concern wouldn't come to pass. There was a protocol, he reassured her, a methodology for prison swaps upheld since the Cold War. The Journal even had prewritten articles, ready to go, the moment Navalny walked free. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray was sitting down for lunch with the chiefs of Britain's MI6 and Germany's BND intelligence agency. Their discreet and thankless work was about to pay off in the very real gift of freedom not only for Navalny but also for Gershkovich, whose reporting Wray admired. But as the meal unfolded, dignitaries began reaching for their phones, buzzing with news from Russia. The most powerful security czars in the Western alliance turned to each other in horror and bewilderment. 'Alexei Navalny has died in prison," the Kremlin's state newswire announced. 'The cause of death is being established." The guests rose one by one to start fielding calls. Wray rushed upstairs to confer with Blinken. America's top diplomat immediately shot back: 'Get me Yulia." An aide struggled to reach Navalny's wife and came back with the number for Grozev. Weaving through the tightly controlled security cordons, European and American officials were scrambling to find each other and confer on what would happen next. The news spread through the hallways and coffee line where a German diplomat blurted out in full earshot of reporters, 'Oh no! We were working on getting him out!" Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reacts as she speaks during the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 16, 2024. Grozev guided Navalny's ashen-faced widow through the hotel gates to the secretary of state's suite. The two embraced, then sat down, and Yulia delivered a powerful message: Putin must be punished for the misery he has wrought. Minutes later she walked down toward the lectern in the shellshocked conference hall with delegates standing to applaud, or crying in their seats, her eyes filled with tears and righteous anger. 'I want Putin, his entourage, Putin's friends, and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, and my husband," she said. Chancellor Scholz wanted to see Yulia but wasn't sure if the woman who had minutes earlier discovered she was a widow would want time with her family. 'I want to meet," she responded and arrived, somehow still composed, in the hotel suite where the chancellor was waiting. 'I have one request," Yulia said, before turning to the question of Krasikov. 'Do not release that man." Across the world, the secret club of people who had labored at organizing an exchange were reeling as its one necessary component was lying dead in an Arctic morgue. Officials across the West had worked for months to free not just Navalny but a growing list of Americans seized by the Kremlin as bargaining chips. CIA officers and their European partners had hunted down Russian spies undercover in an Arctic research institute, the front lines of Ukraine and the suburbs of an Alpine capital. The Justice Department had extradited Russian cybercriminals arrested in the Maldives and on a Swiss mountainside helipad—high-wire legal and diplomatic maneuvers that had given the U.S. trading stock for an exchange that was now on ice. In Los Angeles, Journal publisher Almar Latour was visiting a museum exhibit of art made by prisoners from Soviet gulags, and wondering if a dark gray pencil sketch was drawn in the same camp as Navalny, when his phone rang. It was Carstens, who had landed in Munich just in time to learn it was all for nought. The U.S. could have brought Navalny back alive if it had acted with more urgency, Carstens said. 'If only I had moved faster." The special envoy was blaming himself for not putting more pressure on the White House. 'We could have wrapped this up in August!" Rae, on her way to Ukraine, was boarding a flight, talking to a fellow passenger about her film, neither of them aware until she glanced at her phone that its subject, her friend, had just died. In Russia's IK-17 labor camp, Paul Whelan was trading cigarettes to place a call to his family: 'If they are willing to kill Navalny they could do something to me. Poison me. Break my leg?" His sister Elizabeth was quizzing a case officer on Carstens's staff over text messages about the consequences of a death she was sure wasn't an accident. The IK-17 Penal Colony, where American Paul Whelan was transferred to serve a 16-year sentence on espionage charges he and the U.S. government denied. Jake Sullivan was on his office sofa when a delegation from The Wall Street Journal stepped in. Their meeting, pre-scheduled, was meant to deliver good news, but word of Navalny's death, hours earlier, lent it the air of a wake. Sullivan had a habit of looking toward the floor, or to one side, as he carefully deliberated the angles of a problem. After a long pause, he spoke: 'I never thought a deal with Navalny would work." But he also hadn't expected Putin to kill him, and still wasn't sure if he would ever know the truth behind the dissident's death. Navalny's supporters had lost everything—the man they were trying to save and Russia's dreams for a democratic future. And the Journal, whose reporter, Gershkovich, had now spent 323 days in the Moscow jail where Stalin's henchman once executed purged officials, was no closer to freeing him than in the first hours of his arrest. But in the cloud of grief and disorientation, the national security adviser could also glimpse a new possibility. Germany had crossed the psychological threshold of agreeing to free a murderer—and perhaps they would accept other political prisoners in Navalny's place. The question hanging over that analysis was whether Putin had come to the same fatal conclusion. In the weeks to come, CIA officials would fly to meet their Russian counterparts in Saudi hotels, booked under false names, carrying eyes-only hard-copy lists of prisoners the West could trade with the Kremlin. The world would finally see the fruits of their labor when, on Aug. 1, 2024 six planes delivered 24 prisoners and two children to an exchange point outside a Turkish air terminal, a mix of Russian spies, hackers, cybercriminals—and Krasikov—traded for Russian dissidents, German convicts, and Americans including Whelan, Gershkovich, and other journalists. That trade, the largest East-West swap in modern history, would cement a cold, inescapable fact about the emerging world order: taking and trading prisoners, and bending the justice system to do it, is now what powerful countries do, a transactional order of statecraft encapsulated by Navalny's arrest, the campaign to free him, and his tragic death. For now, however, looking up from his office couch, Sullivan engaged the Journal without offering false hope. The newspaper's lawyers had brought Gershkovich's mother, Ella Milman, and she was looking right at him, asking: 'Doesn't this create more urgency to free Evan?" 'It might," he said. 'It's not a breaking point," he added. 'We will get this done. I see a pathway." Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson are leaders on The Wall Street Journal's World Enterprise Team. This piece is adapted from their new book, 'Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War," which will be published on Aug. 19 by HarperCollins (which, like the Journal, is owned by News Corp).
RTÉ News
30-06-2025
- Business
- RTÉ News
World economy faces 'pivotal moment', central bank body BIS says
Trade tensions and fractious geopolitics risk exposing deep fault lines in the global financial system, central bank umbrella body the Bank for International Settlements, said in its latest assessment of the state of the world economy. Outgoing head of the BIS, often dubbed the central bankers' central bank, Agustín Carstens, said the US-driven trade war and other policy shifts were fraying the long-established economic order. He said the global economy was at a "pivotal moment", entering a "new era of heightened uncertainty and unpredictability", which was testing public trust in institutions, including central banks. The bank's report is published just over a week before US President Donald Trump's trade tariff deadline of July 9 and comes after six months of intense geopolitical upheaval. When asked about Trump's criticisms of US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, which have included Trump labelling the Fed chair as "stupid", he was not overly critical. "It is to be expected at certain points in time that there will be friction," former Mexican central bank governor Carstens told reporters, referring to the relationship between governments and central banks. "It is almost by design". The BIS' annual report, published yesterday, is viewed as an important gauge of central bankers' thinking given the Switzerland-based forum's regular meetings of top policymakers. Rising protectionism and trade fragmentation were "particular concerning" as they were exacerbating the already decades-long decline in economic and productivity growth, Carstens said. There is also evidence that the world economy is becoming less resilient to shocks, with population ageing, climate change, geopolitics and supply chain issues all contributing to a more volatile environment. The post-Covid spike in inflation seems to have had a lasting impact on the public's perception about price moves too, a study in the report showed. High and rising public debt levels are increasing the financial system's vulnerability to interest rates and reducing governments' ability to spend their way out of crises. Wall Street extended its rally on Friday, sending the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to all-time closing highs - with each adding 0.5% - while the Dow climbed 1% higher. "This trend cannot continue," Carstens said referring to the rising debt levels and he said that higher military spending could push the debt up further. Hyun Song Shin, the BIS's main economic adviser, also flagged the sharp fall in the dollar. It is down 10% since the start of the year and on track to be its biggest half yearly drop since the free-floating exchange rate era began in the early 1970s. He said there was no evidence that this was the start of a "great rotation" away from US assets as some economists have suggested, but acknowledged that it was still too early to know given sovereign funds and central banks move slowly. Shorter-term analysis, though, showed "hedging" by non-U.S. investors holding Treasuries and other US assets appears to have made an "important contribution" to the dollar's slide over the last few months. "We haven't seen anything (yet) that would give us any cause for alarm," Shin added. The BIS had already published one part of its report last week that gave a stark warning about the rapid rise of so-called stablecoins. In terms of the BIS' own finances, it said it made a net profit of $1.2 billion, while its total comprehensive income reached a record high of $5.3 billion and currency deposits at the bank also reached a new high.
TimesLIVE
30-06-2025
- Business
- TimesLIVE
World economy faces ‘pivotal moment', central bank body BIS says
The BIS' annual report, published on Sunday, is viewed as an important gauge of central bankers' thinking, given the Switzerland-based forum's regular meetings of top policymakers. Rising protectionism and trade fragmentation were 'particular concerning' as they were exacerbating the decades-long decline in economic and productivity growth, Carstens said. There is also evidence the world economy is becoming less resilient to shocks, with population ageing, climate change, geopolitics and supply chain issues contributing to a more volatile environment. The post-Covid-19 spike in inflation also seems to have had a lasting impact on the public's perception about price moves, a study in the report showed. High and rising public debt levels are increasing the financial system's vulnerability to interest rates and reducing governments' ability to spend their way out of crises. 'This trend cannot continue,' Carstens said, referring to the rising debt levels, and he said higher military spending could further push up the debt up. Hyun Song Shin, the BIS's main economic adviser, also flagged the sharp fall in the dollar. It is down 10% since the start of the year and on track to be its biggest H1 drop since the free-floating exchange rate era began in the early 1970s. He said there was no evidence this was the start of a 'great rotation' away from US assets as some economists have suggested, but acknowledged it was too early to know as sovereign funds and central banks move slowly. Shorter-term analysis, though, showed 'hedging' by non-US investors holding Treasuries and other US assets appears to have made an 'important contribution' to the dollar's slide over the past few months. 'We haven't seen anything (yet) that would give us any cause for alarm,' Shin added. The BIS published one part of its report last week that gave a stark warning about the rapid rise of stablecoins. In terms of the BIS' own finances, it said it made a net profit of 843.7m IMF SDR (R21.3bn), while its total comprehensive income reached a record high of SDR 3.4bn (R94.2bn) and currency deposits at the bank also reached a new high. Carstens said: 'It is important the BIS has the highest creditworthiness out there.'
Business Recorder
30-06-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
World economy faces ‘pivotal moment': BIS
LONDON: Trade tensions and fractious geopolitics risk exposing deep fault lines in the global financial system, central bank umbrella body the Bank for International Settlements, said in its latest assessment of the state of the world economy. Outgoing head of the BIS, often dubbed the central bankers' central bank, Agustín Carstens, said the US-driven trade war and other policy shifts were fraying the long-established economic order. He said the global economy was at a 'pivotal moment', entering a 'new era of heightened uncertainty and unpredictability', which was testing public trust in institutions, including central banks. The bank's report is published just over a week before US President Donald Trump's trade tariff deadline of July 9 and comes after six months of intense geopolitical upheaval. When asked about Trump's criticisms of US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, which have included Trump labelling the Fed chair as 'stupid', he was not overly critical. 'It is to be expected at certain points in time that there will be friction,' former Mexican central bank governor Carstens told reporters, referring to the relationship between governments and central banks. 'It is almost by design'. DOLLAR DROP The BIS' annual report, published on Sunday, is viewed as an important gauge of central bankers' thinking given the Switzerland-based forum's regular meetings of top policymakers. Rising protectionism and trade fragmentation were 'particular concerning' as they were exacerbating the already decades-long decline in economic and productivity growth, Carstens said. There is also evidence that the world economy is becoming less resilient to shocks, with population ageing, climate change, geopolitics and supply chain issues all contributing to a more volatile environment. The post-COVID spike in inflation seems to have had a lasting impact on the public's perception about price moves too, a study in the report showed. High and rising public debt levels are increasing the financial system's vulnerability to interest rates and reducing governments' ability to spend their way out of crises. 'This trend cannot continue,' Carstens said referring to the rising debt levels and he said that higher military spending could push the debt up further. Hyun Song Shin, the BIS's main economic adviser, also flagged the sharp fall in the dollar. It is down 10% since the start of the year and on track to be its biggest H1 drop since the free-floating exchange rate era began in the early 1970s. He said there was no evidence that this was the start of a 'great rotation' away from US assets as some economists have suggested, but acknowledged that it was still too early to know given sovereign funds and central banks move slowly. Shorter-term analysis, though, showed 'hedging' by non-US investors holding Treasuries and other US assets appears to have made an 'important contribution' to the dollar's slide over the last few months. 'We haven't seen anything (yet) that would give us any cause for alarm,' Shin added. The BIS had already published one part of its report last week that gave a stark warning about the rapid rise of so-called stablecoins. In terms of the BIS' own finances, it said it made a net profit of 843.7 million IMF SDR ($1.2 billion), while its total comprehensive income reached a record high of SDR 3.4 billion ($5.3 billion) and currency deposits at the bank also reached a new high. 'It is important that the BIS has the highest creditworthiness out there,' Carstens said.
