Wall Avenue Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been freed as a part of the most important prisoner swap between Russia and the West because the Chilly Struggle.
Paul Whelan, a former US marine, in addition to distinguished Russian opposition politicians and activists who had been jailed for criticising the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, had been additionally among the many 16 individuals launched by Russia.
Most distinguished of these heading again to Moscow was Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a former Chechen insurgent commander in a Berlin park.
Under is a round-up of all these freed.
Freed by Russia
Lilia Chanysheva
Chanysheva, who as soon as headed late opposition chief Alexey Navalny’s workplaces within the central Bashkortostan republic, was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail in June 2023 for having created an “extremist organisation”, a sentence that was elevated to 9 and a half years in April.
An accountant, the 42-year-old had labored for main firms together with Deloitte earlier than becoming a member of Navalny’s crew in 2017, brazenly protesting corruption within the area.
Ksenia Fadeyeva
Fadeyeva led Navalny’s now-banned organisation within the Siberian metropolis of Tomsk, the place the opposition chief was poisoned in August 2020, and was sentenced to 9 years in jail in December 2023 for “extremism”.
The 32-year-old was elected to the Tomsk metropolis legislature in 2020, a transfer hailed as a victory for the Russian opposition within the battle towards Putin’s rule.
Evan Gershkovich
The 32-year-old Wall Avenue Journal reporter was arrested within the Urals metropolis of Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and accused of spying for the CIA.
Russia alleged Gershkovich had been caught “red-handed” spying on a manufacturing facility within the Urals that was making tanks to be used in Ukraine, however introduced no proof to help its claims. The Wall Avenue Journal denied the fees. The US designated the journalist “wrongfully detained”, which means it thought of the case politically motivated.
Gershkovich was convicted on July 19 and sentenced to 16 years in jail after a three-day trial that was closed to the media on grounds of state secrecy.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Kara-Murza, a staunch critic of the Kremlin, was serving a 25-year jail time period for condemning Moscow’s marketing campaign in Ukraine, one of many harshest sentences ever handed to a Putin critic.
A twin British-Russian nationwide, the 42-year-old was arrested in April 2022 after a speech within the US the place he accused Russia of “conflict crimes” towards Ukraine.
In Could, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize “for passionate columns written at nice private threat from his jail cell” that had been printed in The Washington Submit. He suffers from a nerve situation after surviving two poisoning makes an attempt within the 2010s.
We’re overjoyed that Vladimir Kara-Murza has been launched as a part of a prisoner swap. He’s an awfully courageous and principled man, who not too long ago received a Pulitzer Prize for his columns from the gulag.
He and his household have been by means of a lot, just because he instructed the… pic.twitter.com/ebMuOiUexV— James Jones (@jamesjonesfilm) August 1, 2024
Alsu Kurmasheva
US-Russian journalist Kurmasheva, 47, was sentenced to 6 years and 6 months on July 19 – the identical day as Gershkovich – in an ultra-secret trial, which was not reported till days later.
An editor with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty outlet, she was accused of violating Russia’s strict army censorship legal guidelines and arrested whereas travelling to Russia from her residence in Prague to see her sick mom. RFE/RL referred to as her case a “mockery of justice”.
Kevin Lik
Lik, who was arrested when he was 17 and is a twin Russian-German citizen, turned the youngest particular person ever convicted of treason in Russia when he was sentenced in 2023 to 4 years for allegedly sending photographs of a Russian army facility seen from his condominium window to German safety companies.
German Moyzhes
Moyzhes, one other Russian-German twin nationwide, was dealing with treason expenses after he was arrested in Saint Petersburg in Could, in keeping with Russian state media.
Nearly no particulars of the case towards him had been made public. Moyzhes, an immigration lawyer, was well-known in Saint Petersburg as an city activist and pro-cycle campaigner.
Oleg Orlov
The veteran activist and key determine in Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning and now-banned human rights organisation, was jailed for 2 and a half years in February after calling Russia a “fascist” state and criticising its invasion of Ukraine.
Memorial mentioned the 71-year-old Orlov’s trial was “a mockery of justice and an assault on the basic proper to free expression”.
Vadim Ostanin
The previous head of one other of Navalny’s regional branches, Ostanin was sentenced in 2023 to 9 years in jail for collaborating in an “extremist” organisation.
⚡️ Oleg Orlov is free!
We demand the discharge of all different political prisoners in Russia and Belarus.
Russian human rights defender and co-founder of Memorial, Oleg Orlov was launched from jail and transferred to Köln (Germany) right now, in a historic political prisoner swap.… pic.twitter.com/Q2XWqenTxj
— Memorial in English (@EnMemorial) August 1, 2024
Andrei Pivovarov
Pivovarov, a Russian opposition activist, headed the pro-democracy Open Russia basis, which was funded by exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who himself spent a decade in jail for campaigning towards Putin.
Pivovarov was forcibly faraway from a airplane by Russian intelligence brokers earlier than he might go away the nation, and sentenced to 4 years in a penal colony in July 2022 for collaborating with an “undesirable” organisation.
Patrick Schoebel
A German citizen, Schoebel was arrested earlier this yr at Saint Petersburg airport after customs officers discovered hashish gummy bears in his baggage.
Alexandra Skochilenko
An artist, Alexandra Skochilenko was jailed for seven years in November 2023 after she was convicted of spreading “false data” by changing 5 grocery store value tags with messages criticising Russia’s conflict in Ukraine. Higher often called Sasha, the 33-year-old from Saint Petersburg, was arrested in April 2022 after an aged buyer on the grocery store discovered the messages and notified the police.
Dieter Voronin
A twin Russian-German citizen Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in jail on “treason” expenses after Moscow alleged he obtained categorized army data from one other journalist, Ivan Safronov, who stays behind bars.
Paul Whelan
A former US marine with US, British, Irish and Canadian citizenship, Whelan was arrested in a Moscow lodge in 2018, allegedly with a cache of categorized paperwork, when he was the safety director of a US automotive components producer.
Like Gershkovich, 54-year-old Whelan strongly denied the fees towards him and was designated by the US as “wrongfully detained”.
Ilya Yashin
Yashin, 41, was jailed for eight and a half years in December 2022, on expenses of spreading “false data” in regards to the Russian military after he condemned the “murders of civilians” within the Ukrainian city of Bucha earlier that yr.
Yashin rose to prominence in a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in 2011-12 and was a longtime good friend and ally of Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February, in addition to Boris Nemtsov who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015.
Yashin was elected head of a Moscow district council in 2017 however was repeatedly blocked from standing for greater workplace. He was additionally branded a “international agent” by the Russian authorities.
Freed by Belarus
Rico Krieger
Belarus sentenced Krieger, a 30-year-old German nationwide, to demise in June after accusing him of photographing army websites and putting an explosive gadget on a railway line close to Minsk on the orders of Ukraine.
On Tuesday, President Alexander Lukashenko, a high ally of Putin, introduced Krieger had been pardoned.
Freed by the USA, Germany, Slovenia, Poland and Norway
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva
Dultsev and Dultseva, each 40, had been arrested in Slovenia in 2022 and sentenced to greater than a yr and a half in jail this week after being discovered responsible of spying in a trial that was closed to the general public.
The couple had settled within the capital Ljubljana in 2017 utilizing Argentinian passports. Authorities mentioned they had been Russian brokers who travelled to neighbouring nations – members of NATO and the European Union, to move on orders from Moscow and supply money to different sleeper brokers. Their two youngsters, who attended a global faculty in Ljubljana, had been additionally included within the swap.
Vladislav Klyushin
The USA sentenced Klyushin, 42, in September 2023 to 9 years in jail for what it described as an “elaborate hack-to-trade scheme” that concerned hacking into firm techniques to steal confidential data that was then used to commerce securities, netting some $93m.
Vadim Konoshchenok
Konoshchenok was extradited to the US final yr after he was arrested in Estonia on expenses of making an attempt to acquire US army gear for Russia for the conflict in Ukraine. Washington alleges the 48-year-old has “ties to Russia’s FSB”.
Vadim Krasikov
Krasikov, 58, is an alleged hitman for Russia’s FSB, who was jailed for all times over the homicide in a Berlin park of exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili after he was shot useless at shut vary in broad daylight on August 23, 2019.
A German decide accused Russia of state terrorism, saying the order to kill will need to have come from President Vladimir Putin himself.
Moscow has rejected that interpretation, however in a February interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted that Krasikov was the Russian prisoner he most wished in alternate for Gershkovich, referring to an individual who “resulting from patriotic sentiments, eradicated a bandit in one of many European capitals”.
Mikhail Mikushin
Mikushin was arrested in Norway in 2022 and was accused of posing as a Brazilian researcher at a college within the northern metropolis of Tromso.
Bellingcat, an investigative media outlet, mentioned he was actually a colonel in Russia’s GRU army intelligence companies whereas Norwegian media reported that he couldn’t communicate Portuguese, Brazil’s nationwide language.
Pavel Rubtsov
Rubtsov, who was born in Russia however moved to Spain together with his mom as a nine-year-old, was arrested in Poland simply 4 days after Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Poland alleged that Rubtsov, whose Spanish identify is Pablo Gonzalez, was an agent for Russia’s GRU army intelligence service and was working undercover as a journalist.
Roman Seleznev
Seleznev, one other Russian hacker, was arrested within the Maldives in 2014.
He was discovered responsible within the US of a cyber assault on 1000’s of US companies that concerned hacking into card fee terminals to steal bank card particulars, leading to losses of $169m, and was jailed for 27 years in 2017.
That very same yr, Seleznev, the son of a Russian lawmaker, additionally pleaded responsible to collaborating in a racketeering scheme in Nevada and conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud in Georgia. He was given further jail phrases of 14 years every, to run concurrently with the sooner sentence.
