MOSCOW: Signs mounted on Thursday of a major prisoner swap between Russia and Belarus on one side and the United States, Germany, Slovenia and Britain on the other, but there was no official confirmation of what could be the biggest swap since the Cold War.
Incarcerated Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is expected to return to the United States in a prisoner swap likely scheduled for Thursday, Fox News reports.
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane, used in a previous prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, on the border with Lithuania and Poland, before returning to the Russian capital.
Pervy Otdel (First Department), an association specializing in defending people in Russian treason and espionage cases, said the flight could mean a prisoner swap took place on 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, have suddenly disappeared from public view, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly transferred from their prisons in recent days.
On Thursday, another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, was reportedly taken from his Siberian prison and transferred to Moscow, according to unconfirmed reports in Russian media.
The Russian online newspaper “Agenstvo” reported that in recent days at least six special Russian government planes have flown to and from the regions where prisons are located where dissidents are being held.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian man detained in the United States, refused Wednesday to confirm his client's whereabouts to state news agency RIA “until the exchange takes place.” But the lawyer, Arkady Bukh, was quoted by RIA as saying that lawyers representing people imprisoned in Russia had told him they were “on their way” to unknown locations.
RIA also reported that four Russians incarcerated in the United States had disappeared from a prisoner database maintained by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
The United States has also detained at least two other Russian citizens, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev, convicted of serious cyber crimes, who may also be involved.
The Kremlin declined to say whether a swap was imminent, as did the Russian Embassy in Washington, and there was no comment from Western countries. Such swaps are usually shrouded in secrecy until they happen.
Dissidents in Russia whose supporters say they were told they were being abruptly transferred in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov, and Daniil Krinari, who was convicted of secretly collaborating with foreign governments.
Among those who suddenly disappeared from the prison system are Russian-German citizen Kevin Lik, convicted of treason, opposition activists Liliya Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeeva, and peace artist Sasha Skochilenko.
Ivan Pavlov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer now based in Prague and the founder of Pervy Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggested that authorities were rounding them up, probably in Moscow, for exchange.
He said President Vladimir Putin would have to pardon them before their exchange, a necessary formality. The “Important Stories” network drew attention to the fact that Putin, according to a government website, had signed a series of secret decrees on July 30 that it said could be prisoner pardons.
In December 2022, Russia swapped basketball star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence in the United States.
The largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place in 2010, involving a total of 14 people.
THE WEST CONSIDERES PRISONERS AS POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the West, dissidents are seen by governments and activists as unjustly detained political prisoners. All, for different reasons, have been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
Two journalists are also expected to participate in the exchange.
On July 19, Gershkovich was unusually quickly convicted on espionage charges he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, and Russia has already confirmed talks about a possible exchange for him.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also convicted in a secret trial the same day and sentenced to 6 1/2 years, accused of spreading false information about the Russian military. She denies any wrongdoing.
Among other U.S. citizens behind bars in Russia is former teacher Marc Fogel, convicted of possession of marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
Meanwhile, in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges, on Tuesday, once again with unusual swiftness and with due state media coverage.
Among those Moscow has signaled it wants to arrest is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for killing an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to prison terms for espionage and using false identities, and ordered them to be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move that a Slovenian television channel said was part of a broader exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm this.
