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Washington Post
an hour ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
‘Swap' is a riveting look at U.S.-Russia hostage deals
There's so much to like in 'Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,' a deeply reported account of the dealmaking that has gone into prisoner exchanges between the United States and Russia: the galloping narrative, the excruciating and often unexpected obstacles confronted and overcome, and most of all the appealing and appalling cast of characters. On the one side, among others, there is Brittney Griner, the outstanding WNBA basketball player; the former Marine Paul Whelan; and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who on his way out of Lefortovo prison asked if Russian President Vladimir Putin would sit for an interview. (So far, he hasn't.) On the other side, we have Maria Butina, who cozied up to American gun advocates while living in the U.S. as an undeclared foreign agent; Viktor Bout, who sold guns to warring groups around the world; and Vadim Krasikov, who murdered a Chechen exile in broad daylight in a park in Berlin. Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson, the authors of 'Swap,' are investigative reporters with the Wall Street Journal. They write about several different trades, going back as far as 2010, but they focus on the exchange in 2024 in which 24 people — including Krasikov and their colleague Gershkovich — were sent back to their respective home countries. As reported at the time, it was a vastly complicated deal, a 'Rubik's cube,' as Hinshaw and Parkinson put it, involving not only Russia and the U.S. but Poland, Germany and Slovenia, with Turkey playing an important supporting role. The timing had to be exact, doubters had to be assuaged, and calculations as to which ones of theirs would balance which ones of ours had to be politically acceptable. I mention 'theirs' and 'ours' because this is a story told, not surprisingly, almost entirely from the American point of view. Were there arguments within the Kremlin? Debates over timing or methods? That we don't know. Early in the book, the authors suggest that there was a sort of symmetry between Moscow and Washington. The Russians nabbed Americans; in response, U.S. intelligence services identified undercover Russian spies in Slovenia and Poland, and persuaded those countries' authorities to move in and make arrests, with an eye toward using them in an exchange. 'In the fog of this new pirate world,' the authors write, 'a careful observer could glimpse a discomforting truth: To play this game of snatch-and-trade, America and its high-minded allies would have to ask themselves, how much were they willing to be like Russia?' But that analogy doesn't take us very far, as this book itself eventually makes clear. Putin's principal aim was to secure the release of Bout, who was serving a long sentence in an Illinois penitentiary, and Krasikov, who was in a German prison. Griner, traded for Bout in an exchange that preceded the larger 'Rubik's cube' swap, is in no way comparable to him. Nor are Gershkovich, Whelan or Alsu Kurmasheva — a Radio Free Europe reporter arrested after she returned to Russia to visit her mother — at all analogous to Krasikov, a colonel in the elite Alpha Group within Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. The people rounded up in Europe at the request of the Americans were Russian intelligence agents, not journalists or tourists or high school teachers or basketball players. Russian criminals were swapped for Western hostages. The German government was loath to release Krasikov, a convicted killer. 'Swap' argues that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz just needed a little push from Washington, which Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security adviser, was slow to green-light. A key element was the inclusion of the imprisoned Alexei Navalny in the deal. Putin's most effective opponent, Navalny had recovered in a German hospital after the FSB attempted to kill him with a nerve agent. And then he had gone back to Russia, where he was immediately arrested. The authors mention but don't elaborate on the notion that the Germans could portray an exchange involving Navalny as an act of especial righteousness, which would make the release and trade of Krasikov palatable to them. But Navalny died in his Arctic prison camp before the swap could take place. One possible interpretation, which this book doesn't address, is that Putin, who detested and feared Navalny, had him killed. Once Putin saw that Berlin had relented and was willing to trade, this theory suggests, he was confident that some other deal not including Navalny could be made, even if it would take some time. And he would never have to worry about Navalny again. Eight Russian dissidents were released along with the Americans, most prominent among them Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading figure in the Putin opposition, the target of two botched poisonings and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post's opinion section. Kara-Murza had been convicted of 'discrediting' the military and treason after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The possibility of securing Kara-Murza's freedom was what convinced Germany to play its crucial part in the deal and release Krasikov; without Krasikov, the Russians most likely would have made no deal at all. The authors mention Kara-Murza almost in passing and don't even identify the other Russian dissidents. It's an unfortunate gap in an otherwise wonderfully detailed account. These men and women were not hostages — they were prisoners unjustly incarcerated by their own government. Their inclusion elevated the exchange. Some officials worried that exchanging prisoners would just invite more hostage-taking by regimes around the world, given that Gershkovich was arrested on spurious charges after Griner had been traded for Bout. But the inclusion of the Russian opposition figures was a counterargument — that the Biden administration, faced with a horrible dilemma, had in the end leveraged some good out of it. One hero of the exchange — and of the book — is Christo Grozev. A Bulgarian forensic journalist of sorts, Grozev had uncovered Russian agents and unearthed all sorts of crimes they had committed using flight paths, photos on social media, phone records and satellite imagery. He had helped Navalny to identify his FSB poisoners. It was Grozev, working with Navalny's aide Maria Pevchikh, who proposed expanding the exchange, to transform stalled negotiations over Krasikov and the Americans into the grand bargain that was eventually made. Remarkably, he found U.S. officials who were receptive and who went to work to make it happen. There's a type of news story called a ticktock, beloved by editors, that strives to present a blow-by-blow account of the tense meetings, anguished decisions, crossed messages and outright miscommunications that all led up to some important event. 'Swap,' compelling and sprawling, delivers on that score. It's a book-length ticktock packed with colorful details. I doubt there's a deeper lesson to be drawn from it — unless it's the rather self-evident truth that, for now, Americans should steer clear of Russia. Will Englund is a former Moscow correspondent. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he is the author of 'March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution.'
USA Today
01-08-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
US-Russia prisoner swap one year later: What to know about the history-making deal
One year ago, Russia and the United States conducted the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, freeing journalist Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian custody. The August 1, 2024, deal was the culmination of months of backdoor negotiations between former President Joe Biden's administration, the Russian government and the governments of five other nations, making it one of the most significant diplomatic operations between Russia and the West in decades. In total, the historic swap involved the release of 16 people previously detained in Russia in exchange for eight people held in the U.S., Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland. Turkey was a neutral country where the swap took place. US-Russia Relationship: Trump said he'd end Ukraine war in 24 hours. Now his patience with Putin is wearing thin. Who was released from Russian custody in the swap? More than a dozen people were released from Russian prisons and labor camps, several of them Russian pro-democracy and human rights activists or prominent opposition figures of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The deal also freed five German citizens from Russian custody, three American citizens and one U.S. resident. The three Americans were Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, the journalist Gershkovich and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. More: Who were the Russian prisoners released in swap for Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich? The last high-profile prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. took place more than two years prior, when American basketball player Brittney Griner was exchanged for a notorious Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. He had been held in an American prison for 12 years following convictions of aiding a terrorist organization, conspiring to kill Americans and to supply anti-aircraft missiles. Griner was arrested in February 2022 after customs officials in Russia alleged that they found vape cartridges containing oil derived from cannabis in her luggage, and was sentenced to nine years in prison for smuggling drugs. Who is Paul Whelan? Whelan, who was born in Canada and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, worked as a police officer for over a decade before he joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves. He received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines after he was convicted in a special court-martial of attempting to steal more than $10,000 while at Al Asad Airbase in Iraq. He was arrested while visiting Russia in December 2018 and charged with espionage, which he and his family have firmly denied. He was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor in a work camp. At the time of his arrest, Whelan was the head of global security for BorgWarner, a Michigan-based auto supply company. Who is Evan Gershkovich? Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, was detained in Russia in March 2023 while living and working in the country as one of the Wall Street Journal's Moscow reporters. He is a former national of the Soviet Union and had accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist in the country at the time. His arrest came a little over a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, during a time of heightened tensions between the West and Russia over the war. At the time, the Kremlin was cracking down on opposition activists, independent journalists, and civil society groups, USA TODAY previously reported. By the time of his release, he had been held in Russia for 17 months. Who is Alsu Kurmasheva? Kurmasheva is a Russian-American journalist who was working for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty at the time of her detention. She was detained while visiting Russia in June 2023 for a family emergency for failing to register her U.S. passport with Russian authorities. Authorities confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty reported, preventing her from leaving the country, and later detained her again in October 2023, on charges of failing to declare herself a foreign agent. Kurmasheva and her employer have long denied the accusations, calling the detention and charges politically motivated. Leading human rights and media watchdog organizations have called Kurmasheva's and Gershkovich's arrests arbitrary and part of Russia's years-long crackdown on independent and foreign media. A few months later, Russian authorities launched a third investigation against the journalist for 'spreading false information' about Russia's military, a charge for which she was convicted in July 2024. Who is Vladimir Kara-Murza? Kara-Murza, a former journalist and prominent opposition figure, was also part of the 2024 prisoner swap. He is Russian-born but has dual citizenship with the U.K., and is a U.S. green card holder. He is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post. Kara-Murza had been imprisoned since 2022 on charges of treason and spreading false information about the Russian military, which he has rejected. In 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was poisoned twice, in 2015 and 2017. Kara-Murza has claimed both were assassination attempts using the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, and caused him to fall into a coma. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. According to his Washington Post bio, a media investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider identified officers of Russia's Federal Security Service who were behind the poisonings. Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, Christopher Cann, Margie Cullen, USA TODAY NETWORK. Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Russia says it plans to summon the German ambassador over alleged harassment of its journalists
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia will summon the German ambassador soon to inform him of retaliatory measures in response to what it sees as the harassment of Russian journalists based in Germany, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. Russia has clashed repeatedly with Germany over the issue, and expelled a German correspondent and cameraman last November in what it said was a symmetrical response to German moves against Russian state TV journalists. Germany said the Russians' departure was linked to residence rules, and that Russian journalists can report freely in the country. Zakharova said Germany was applying undue "pressure and harassment" against Russian journalists and their family members. She has previously spoken of passports being revoked and limits on journalists' freedom of movement. Russia continues to accredit Western correspondents, although many left the country after Moscow in 2022 launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, which was followed by the passage of new censorship laws, and the 2023 arrest of U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges. Gershkovich, who denied the accusation, was freed in a prisoner swap last year.
Reuters
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Russia says it plans to summon the German ambassador over alleged harassment of its journalists
MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) - Russia will summon the German ambassador soon to inform him of retaliatory measures in response to what it sees as the harassment of Russian journalists based in Germany, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. Russia has clashed repeatedly with Germany over the issue, and expelled a German correspondent and cameraman last November in what it said was a symmetrical response to German moves against Russian state TV journalists. Germany said the Russians' departure was linked to residence rules, and that Russian journalists can report freely in the country. Zakharova said Germany was applying undue "pressure and harassment" against Russian journalists and their family members. She has previously spoken of passports being revoked and limits on journalists' freedom of movement. Russia continues to accredit Western correspondents, although many left the country after Moscow in 2022 launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, which was followed by the passage of new censorship laws, and the 2023 arrest of U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges. Gershkovich, who denied the accusation, was freed in a prisoner swap last year.
Al Arabiya
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
US ambassador to Russia to leave post soon, says embassy
Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Russia, will soon leave her post, her embassy said on Thursday, after serving through one of the most tense and difficult periods in relations between Moscow and Washington. Tracy, a career diplomat, arrived in Moscow in January 2023 and was greeted by protesters chanting anti-US slogans when she went to the Foreign Ministry to present her credentials. Russia had questioned her suitability for the post, suggesting she might feel more at home in a hawkish think-tank. Her term was dominated by the Ukraine war, which plunged US-Russia ties to a level described by the Kremlin last year as 'below zero.' She was notably involved in efforts to win the release of US citizens jailed in Russia including journalist Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan, who were eventually freed in August 2024 as part of a big East-West prisoner swap. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, Russia and the US have launched a series of contacts aimed at improving relations. Russia's new ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiev, formally presented his credentials to Trump on Wednesday. Both sides say there is huge potential for business and investment deals if relations improve, though Trump has voiced frustration about Russia's war actions in Ukraine and the lack of any visible progress towards a peace deal. Tracy's tenure is likely to be similar in duration to her predecessor, John Sullivan, who served as ambassador for two years and seven months from February 2020 to September 2022.
