Who are the prisoners in the Russia-West exchange that took place in Türkiye?

The United States has confirmed a significant prisoner exchange with Russia involving 24 individuals. Among those released are Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, both American citizens.

In the deal, Germany freed Russian security service hitman Vadim Krasikov. Speculation about a major swap had been circulating for days, heightened by the movement of several prisoners from their cells in Russian jails to undisclosed locations.

Who are the prisoners?

Evan Gershkovich

U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony earlier this month on espionage charges. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was initially arrested in March of the previous year while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, located approximately 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow.

The prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), allegations that Gershkovich, the WSJ, and the U.S. government strongly deny. His conviction is the first instance of a U.S. journalist being found guilty of espionage in Russia since the end of the Cold War over 30 years ago. Following his arrest, he was detained in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison.

Paul Whelan

Paul Whelan, 54, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after his arrest in Moscow on espionage charges in 2018. The former U.S. Marine holds citizenship in four countries: the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Ireland. According to his lawyer, he is currently incarcerated in the Mordovia region.

After being discharged from the military in 2008 for misconduct, Whelan became a security consultant, frequently traveling to Russia for work. In December 2018, Russia’s FSB state security agency arrested him, alleging he was caught spying in Moscow, a charge his family has consistently denied.

Alsu Kurmasheva

On the same day Evan Gershkovich was convicted, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva received a six-and-a-half-year sentence in a medium-security prison following a secret trial. As an editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S. government-funded organization, she was found guilty of disseminating false information about the Russian military.

Her husband, Pavel Butorin, stated that her arrest was related to a book she published last year, which compiled stories of Russians opposing the war in Ukraine. Kurmasheva, who holds both U.S. and Russian citizenship, resided in Prague with her husband and two daughters. She was detained in June 2023 during a visit to her mother in Russia.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian dissident, is well-known for his strong opposition to the Putin regime and his outspoken criticism of the war in Ukraine and the suppression of dissent within Russia. In 2023, at the age of 42, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for disseminating “false” information about the Russian military and his association with an “undesirable organization.”

Kara-Murza, a former journalist and politician, denied all the charges against him. Holding dual British-Russian citizenship, he served his sentence in a Siberian prison colony, where his wife reported that he developed a neurological condition due to poisoning.

Ilya Yashin

Ilya Yashin, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures, was imprisoned in 2022 for allegedly “spreading fake news” about the Russian military. His arrest came after he condemned suspected Russian war crimes in Bucha.

After the death of former opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, Yashin expressed fear for his own life. From his prison in the western Smolensk region, Yashin accused President Vladimir Putin of going “mad with power” in a series of letters.

Oleg Orlov

Oleg Orlov, a Russian human rights activist, was jailed in February for calling Russia a fascist state and criticizing the war in Ukraine. Previously, he served as the chair of the Nobel Prize-winning organization Memorial.

At 71, Orlov was sentenced to two and a half years for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian armed forces. During his appeal in July, he likened the Russian justice system to that of Nazi Germany.

Orlov’s sentencing followed a retrial. In the initial trial in October of the previous year, he received a 150,000 rouble fine (£1,290; $1,630) and was released. However, his later conviction reflected a growing repression against war opponents.

Lilia Chanysheva

Lilia Chanysheva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison earlier this year on charges of extremism. She had previously served as a local coordinator for the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption network.

Initially, she was sentenced to seven years in 2023, but prosecutors appealed, arguing the sentence was too lenient. She was most recently held at a facility in the Perm region.

Chanysheva was the first of Navalny’s allies to be sentenced on such charges. Most of his other activists have fled Russia into exile.

Ksenia Fadeyeva

Ksenia Fadeyeva received a nine-year prison sentence for allegedly organizing an extremist group. She had been a local organizer for Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation in Tomsk, Siberia, where she was later detained.

Her lawyers argued that she had severed ties with the organization before it was labeled an extremist group in 2021. In recent years, the Kremlin’s intensified repression of opposition groups has forced most of Navalny’s former staff and allies to flee Russia into exile.

Sasha Skochilenko

Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for her protest action in November, where she replaced supermarket pricing labels with anti-war messages. These messages highlighted civilian deaths in Mariupol and described Russia as a “fascist state.”

The artist from St. Petersburg had been held in a detention center in the city since April 2023.

Kevin Lik

Kevin Lik, a German-Russian citizen, was convicted of treason as a teenager, making him the youngest person ever found guilty of this crime. He grew up in Germany before moving to Russia at the age of 12.

Last December, authorities sentenced him to four years in prison for allegedly emailing photos to “representatives of a foreign state” before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The court claimed that he had visited and photographed “deployment sites” of Russian troops.

Rico Krieger

German national Rico Krieger was accused of planting explosives in Belarus and sentenced to death. However, he was pardoned earlier this week by the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko.

During a heavily staged interview on state-controlled media, Krieger claimed he was acting on instructions from Ukraine, though no evidence was provided. He is believed to be the first Western citizen ever to receive the death penalty in Belarus.

Andrei Pivovarov

Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov led the Open Russia foundation, established by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison for opposing President Putin. Pivovarov was arrested in 2021 while trying to leave St. Petersburg, accused of directing an “undesirable organization.”

Dieter Voronin

Russian-German citizen Dieter Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on treason charges. Moscow alleged that he received classified military information from journalist Ivan Safronov, who is also imprisoned, according to AFP.

Other German citizens released by Russia

• Patrick Schoebel: Detained in St. Petersburg earlier this year for reportedly possessing a packet of cannabis gummy bears.
• Herman Moyzhes: A Russian-German immigration lawyer arrested in May on treason charges.
• Vadim Ostanin: Former head of one of Alexei Navalny’s regional branches, sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023.

Who is Vadim Krasikov and the other Russians released by the West?

Vadim Krasikov

One of the most notable prisoners returned to Russia is Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of an exiled Chechen commander in a Berlin park. Prosecutors during his trial stated that he acted on orders from Russia and belonged to the highly secretive Vympel unit of the FSB. Krasikov’s defense lawyers claimed he was a construction worker, not a hitman, and he denied being Krasikov, identifying himself instead as Vadim Sokolov, the name on the passport he carried. In a recent interview with U.S. talk show host Tucker Carlson, President Putin hinted that Russia sought Krasikov’s release in exchange for U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Roman Seleznev

Roman Seleznev was convicted in 2017 of running a hacking scheme that caused $169 million in damages. U.S. officials reported that he stole credit card data from restaurants and sold it on the black market. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the scheme, which prosecutors said operated between 2009 and 2013. The Justice Department indicated that Seleznev used software to steal millions of credit card numbers from thousands of businesses. His father, Valery Seleznev, is an MP and an ally of President Putin.

Vadim Konoshchenok

In 2022, the U.S. charged Vadim Konoshchenok with conspiracy related to procurement and money laundering for the Russian government. He was also believed to be an FSB agent. The U.S. Department of Justice stated that he and others unlawfully purchased and exported highly sensitive electronic components, some of which could be used for military purposes.

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva

Husband and wife Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested and convicted on espionage charges in Slovenia. They were each sentenced to 19 months in prison, and their two children returned to Russia with them.

Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin

University lecturer Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin was charged in Norway in 2022 with gathering intelligence for Russia while posing as a Brazilian academic. Norwegian officials stated that he used a Brazilian passport and had worked as a researcher at the University of Tromso since 2021, reportedly under the name Jose Assis Giammaria. Mikushin was also believed to have lied about his age, being 44 instead of 37 when charged.

Other Russians released

• Vladislav Klyushin: Sentenced to nine years in the U.S. for insider trading.
• Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov: Spanish-Russian journalist arrested in Poland in February 2022, accused of using freelance journalism as a cover for intelligence activities.