The art of the deal

While there’s a long history of East-West prisoner exchanges dating from the earliest years of the Cold War, a combination of the peculiarly ruthless brinkmanship displayed by Russia’s intelligence services and the full-scale subjugation of the country’s judicial system to the Kremlin in the past decade have raised the prisoner exchange to something close to an art form in Russia. What other deals has the country brokered with the West since Putin came to power?

Russia/Ukraine: Savchenko for Yerofeyev & Alexandrov in 2016

Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko was captured by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and illegally taken to Russia where she was charged with directing artillery fire that killed two Russian television reporters covering the War in Donbas in Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

While Savchenko proclaimed her innocence, she was found guilty by a Russian court and sentenced to 22 years in prison. During the two years she spent in a penal colony, Savchenko became a national hero in her homeland, got herself elected to the Ukrainian parliament from her prison cell, went on hunger strike to protest her incarceration and famously flipped off a Russian judge live on TV.

Nevertheless, in May 2016, Vladimir Putin issued a presidential pardon for Savchenko and she was exchanged for Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, two Russian military intelligence officers who had been captured in Ukraine.

Yerofeyev and Aleksandrov had been captured in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region in 2015 after being wounded in fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government forces. Both were subsequently found guilty of waging an “aggressive war”, using weapons to provoke a military conflict, and committing an act of terror, and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Russia/Ukraine: Afanasyev & Soloshenko for Glishchinskaya & Didenko in 2016

On June 14, 2016, two Ukrainian citizens — Hennady Afanasyev and Yury Soloshenko — serving jail terms in Russia, were swapped for two other Ukrainians, Yelena Glishchinskaya and Vitaly Didenko. The first two went to Kyiv, and the latter two to Moscow.

Glishchinskaya and Didenko were arrested in April 2015 and charged with separatism and treason. Glishchinskaya was then head of a TV company and an assistant to Ukrainian politician Vitaly Barvinenko, while Didenko worked as a journalist in the city of Odesa.

Investigators said the pair had helped organise the separatist People’s Council of Bessarabia movement. Didenko was also charged with possessing and selling drugs, and sentenced to three years in prison. Glishchinskaya gave birth to a child in pretrial detention and was released from custody. While neither Glishchinskay nor Didenko ever admitted their guilt, both went to live in Russia after they were pardoned.

Afanasyev was detained on 9 May 2014, charged with multiple acts of terror in annexed Crimea and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Soloshenko was detained in August 2014 for “espionage”. The details of the case against him were not disclosed, but he is known to have run the Znamya armaments factory in the Ukrainian city of Poltava for 20 years. He was sentenced to six years in prison. He was diagnosed with cancer while serving his sentence.

Russia/Ukraine: 35 for 35 in 2019

Russia and Ukraine conducted the 35 for 35 prisoner swap in 2019. Kirill Vyshinsky, the former head of the RIA Novosti-Ukraine news agency, who had been detained on treason charges in Ukraine, was one of the prisoners handed over to Russia. Ukraine also handed over anti-Ukrainian protesters, servicemen from the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR in the country’s east and other people detained for “espionage” and “participation in illegal armed groups”.

Russia, meanwhile, handed over Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security penal colony on terrorism charges in August 2015. Oleksandr Kolchenko, a pro-Ukrainian Crimean activist, was also exchanged, as were sailors from the Nikopol, Berdyansk and Yany Kapu ships, who were detained in 2018 and charged with illegally crossing the border.

Russia/United States: Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout, 2022

US basketball player and two-time Olympic champion Brittney Griner was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February 2022 after vape cartridges containing cannabis oil were found in her hand luggage. She was found guilty of the smuggling and possession of narcotics, given a fine of 1 million rubles (€10,800) and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Less than a year after her arrest, however, Griner was exchanged for notorious Russian arms dealer and rumoured Russian military intelligence officer Viktor Bout, who was known as the “Merchant of Death” for his business dealings with the likes of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Rwandan rebel groups, and about whom the Nicholas Cage film Lord of War was made.

Bout had been detained in Thailand in 2008 and was subsequently extradited to the US where he was put on trial and sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiring to murder US officials, buying and delivering anti-aircraft missiles, and aiding a terrorist organisation. A New York federal court also ordered him to forfeit his $15 million (€11.5 million) fortune.