MOSCOW: Signs of a major prisoner swap between Russia and Belarus on one side and the US, Germany, Slovenia and Britain on the other multiplied on Thursday but there was no official confirmation of what could be the biggest exchange since the Cold War.
Fox News reported that jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich would return to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange, possibly later Thursday.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner exchange involving the US and Russia had flown from Moscow to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad bordering 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 had taken place at the Polish border. Reuters could not confirm that.
Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, have suddenly disappeared from view, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly moved from their prisons . recently.
On Thursday, there were unconfirmed Russian media reports that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been taken from his Siberian prison and moved to Moscow.
Russian online media “Agenstvo” has reported that at least six special Russian government planes have flown in recent days to and from regions where prisons with dissidents are located.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian man held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm his client's whereabouts to the state news agency RIA “until the exchange takes place.” But the lawyer, Arkady Bukh, was quoted by RIA as having 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 had disappeared from a database of prisoners run by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
The US is also detaining at least two other Russian nationals, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev, convicted of serious cyber crimes, which could also be counted.
The Kremlin has declined to say whether an exchange is on the way, as has the Russian embassy in Washington, and there has been no comment from Western countries. Such exchanges are usually shrouded in secrecy until they occur.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told they were suddenly moved 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.
Others who have suddenly disappeared into the prison system include German-Russian citizen 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 now living in Prague who founded Pervy Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggested authorities were rounding them up, probably in Moscow, for the exchange.
He said President Vladimir Putin would have to pardon them before their exchange, a necessary formality. The media outlet “Important Stories” drew attention to the fact that Putin, according to a government website, had signed a number of secret decrees on July 30 that it said could be pardons of prisoners.
In December 2022, Russia exchanged basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having gun cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States
The largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place in 2010, with a total of 14 people involved.
WEST SEES PRISONERS AS POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the West, dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully imprisoned political prisoners. All of them, for various reasons, have 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, which he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and Russia has already confirmed talks about his possible exchange.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for 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 army. She denies any wrongdoing.
Other American citizens behind bars in Russia include former school teacher Marc Fogel, convicted of possession of marijuana, which he said he used for medical purposes.
In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, 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 who served time in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using false identities, and said they would be deported, state news agency STA reported, a move that a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm that.
