Is Putin exchanging dozens of prisoners?

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Lerato Khumalo

In Russia, contact with many foreign prisoners has been broken off. Will the prisoners suddenly be released?

Following reports of the transfer of numerous political prisoners in Russia, there could be a major exchange of prisoners. The newspaper “Welt” reports, citing security circles, that this could be the “largest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War”.

Specifically, more than two dozen prisoners from Russia could be released. Various names have been speculated about for days. One of them could be the prominent Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, who, according to his lawyer, was transferred from the penal camp in Omsk to a currently unknown location.

According to speculation, the possible prisoner exchange includes a large number of prisoners, including several Kremlin opponents. Russia wants to force the release of the so-called Tiergarten murderer, who is imprisoned in Germany.

All of those detained are opponents of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and received long sentences. The West had criticized the verdicts as arbitrary justice and demanded the release of the prisoners.

Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who has been criticized for using political prisoners as hostages to force the release of Russians from Western prisons, has recently repeatedly declared his willingness to make an exchange. The USA, for example, wants to secure the release of its citizens Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, the journalist from the Wall Street Journal, who were convicted of espionage. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov did not want to comment on the speculation on Friday morning. “I still have no comment to make on this,” Peskov said in Moscow.

Putin is said to be particularly interested in the Russian Vadim K., who is imprisoned in Germany and was convicted of murdering a Chechen exile in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin. K. is said to have committed the crime on behalf of Russian state authorities.

In Belarus, ruler Alexander Lukashenko lifted the death penalty against the German Rico K. on Tuesday. Previously, there had been speculation that the German could also be exchanged for the “Tiergarten murderer”.

However, there are other people in custody in Russia who could be considered for an exchange and who, like Kara-Mursa, are currently considered missing. Among them are three prisoners who, according to their relatives and supporters, are no longer in the same prison but have “left” for another facility, according to prison authorities: opposition politician Ilya Yashin, prominent human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Danila Krinari: a man who was convicted of collaborating with foreign governments.

The Russian state has classified four other prisoners as dangerous extremists for various reasons. In the West, governments and activists view them as wrongfully imprisoned political prisoners: German-Russian citizen Kevin Lick, who was convicted of high treason, opposition activists Lilija Chanyscheva and Xenia Fadeeva, and anti-war artist Alexandra Skotschilenko.

The prison transfers followed the unusually swift conviction of US journalist Gershkovich on July 19 on espionage charges, which he denies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Russia has already confirmed that talks about an exchange have taken place. Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was sentenced in unusual haste the same day in a secret trial to six and a half years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army. She denies this.