Russia on Thursday put on a plane journalists, politicians and a historian, among others. In return later that evening, Putin gave a red carpet welcome home to Russia’s spies, cybercriminals and a murderer with proven ties to the Kremlin.
Rather than appear embarrassed by the contrast, Moscow made a spectacle of it. Putin personally greeted the returning ex-prisoners on the Vnukovo airport tarmac and brought his top defense and security chiefs with him.
He gave Krasikov a comradely hug and told the group he would be discussing their “futures” with them soon.
In Putin’s Russia, patriots are rewarded with state awards and political positions.
And traitors removed: either by sudden death, as in Navalny’s case; by jailing, or, if they are extremely lucky, as on Thursday, by a once-in-a blue-moon swap.
Аlexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that with the prisoner exchange, the Kremlin is signaling to Russians that they “shouldn’t be afraid to commit crimes in the name of the regime, the Motherland will bail them out.”
At a press conference in Bonn on Friday, Ilya Yashin, one of the Russian dissidents who was freed, was visibly torn about the price which would be paid for him walking free.
“Of course this motivates Putin to take new people hostage, of course this motivates Putin to increase the number of political prisoners!” he told journalists emotionally. “That’s what dictators do.”
Years of negotiations
Getting all sides to agree to the swap reportedly took years and the chances of a repeat anytime soon are slim.
For Marc Fogel’s sister, Anne, it is a bitter disappointment. She remains angry, believing the American government prioritized the release of dissident Russians over getting her brother home. “We played our hand,” she said.
Kremlin critics who still enjoy their freedom will do well to tread carefully, now a few prison cells have become vacant. Even as talks on the swap must have been entering their final stages, Russian authorities launched new cases against several journalists over supposed ties to Navalny.
Those cases come on top of those of Daniel Kholodny, a TV technician for Navalny’s YouTube channel, and three of Navalny’s lawyers, all of whom sit in jail.
“This is not a thaw or an act of humaneness,” Russian journalist Dmitry Kolezev wrote of the prisoner exchange. “[The Kremlin] needed their spies back — so they collected hostages and exchanged some of them. Others will remain in jail.”
The good news for them is that the swap suggests there are Western governments prepared to help them.
The bad news: Putin knows it, too.