MOSCOW: Signs of a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Belarus on the one hand and the United States, Germany, Slovenia and Britain on the other grew on Thursday, but there was no official confirmation of what it could be the biggest exchange since the Cold War.
Fox News reported that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was to return to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange, possibly later Thursday.
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 revealed 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 returning to the Russian capital.
Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association specializing in defending people in Russian cases of treason and espionage, said the flight 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, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly moved from their prisons. in the last days.
On Thursday, there were unconfirmed reports in Russian media that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been released from his Siberian prison and moved to Moscow.
Russian online media “Agenstvo” reported that at least six special Russian government planes have flown in recent days to and from regions where prisons holding dissidents are located.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian detained in the United States, on Wednesday declined to confirm to the RIA news agency where his client is “until the exchange takes place.” But the lawyer, Arkady Bukh, was quoted by RIA as saying he had been told by lawyers representing people imprisoned in Russia that they were “on their way” to unknown locations.
RIA also reported that four Russians imprisoned in the United States have disappeared from a prisoner database operated by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. He appointed Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
The U.S. also has 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 being planned, as did the Russian embassy in Washington, and there was no comment from Western countries. Such exchanges are usually shrouded in secrecy until they take place.
Dissidents in Russia whose supporters say they were told they had been moved suddenly in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, who was convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
Others who have suddenly disappeared into the prison system include German-Russian national Kevin Lik, convicted of 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 a similar profile suggests authorities are rounding them up, possibly in Moscow, for exchange.
He said President Vladimir Putin would have to pardon them before their exchange, a necessary formality. The “Important Stories” media drew attention to the fact that Putin, according to a government website, signed a series of secret decrees on July 30 that he said could be the pardon of prisoners.
In December 2022, Russia swapped basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years in prison for carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence years in the USA.
The largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place in 2010, involving a total of 14 people.
WEST SEES PRISONERS AS POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the West, dissidents are seen by governments and activists as unjustly held political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
The exchange is also expected to include two journalists.
On July 19, Gershkovich was sentenced unusually quickly on espionage charges he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Russia has already confirmed talks about his possible exchange.
Alsou Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also convicted in a secret trial on the same day and sentenced to 6 1/2 years, accused of spreading false information about the Russian military. She denies wrongdoing.
Other US citizens behind bars in Russia include former teacher Marc Fogel, convicted of possessing marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, on Tuesday pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges, again with unusual haste and state media coverage.
Among those Moscow has signaled it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving life in Germany for killing an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday convicted two Russians of espionage and using false identities and said they would be deported, state news agency STA reported, a move that a Slovenian television channel said was part of the exchange larger.
Reuters could not independently confirm this.
