This prisoner swap has come at a high cost

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This prisoner swap has come at a high cost

Amid the desolation of the war in Ukraine and its fallout, the West can allow itself one moment of celebration today to mark the

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. In what can confidently be called the largest prisoner swap with Russia since the Cold War, the West has secured the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Russian opposition politicians Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin and former US marine

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, amongst others.

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, such as Gershkovich, Whelan and Kara-Murza, have become well known in the West since their wrongful incarcerations. Others, such as the artist Sasha Skochilenko, who was sentenced to seven years in jail last year for swapping supermarket stickers with anti-war messages, less so. All those being released to the West by Russia were innocent of the ******* the Kremlin accused them of: treason, spreading fake information and discrediting the Russian army, espionage.

The same cannot be said of those the West has traded them for. Returning to Russia today are the married Russian spies Artem and Anna Dultsev, imprisoned until today in Slovenia, and the hitman Vadim Krasikov, serving a life sentence in Berlin for the ******* of a Chechen dissident in 2019. Meanwhile, Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznev are common **********: both had been serving sentences in the US for, amongst other things, ******. Handing them over to freedom in Russia before justice has run its course is a bitter pill to ********.

The Kremlin’s motivation for releasing so many of what were in reality political hostages in one fell swoop is, as yet, unexplained. Some have suggested that, with November’s US presidential election drawing ever closer, and great uncertainty as to what the diplomatic landscape will look like in its aftermath, there was an ******* on both the Russian and Western sides to seal a deal before their many months of negotiations were frittered away by a change of administration in the White House. Joe Biden’s decision last month to step away from the presidential race may have made the decision a little easier for the Kremlin to accept.

But Russia’s decision to negotiate and agree to the largest prisoner swap in 35 years has left ****** without a stockpile of political pawns to manipulate the West with. This should concern us. With the war in Ukraine still raging, it would be a mistake to regard today’s prisoner swap as a thaw of any kind in West-Russia relations. So what will ****** do next?

Sooner or later, ****** may have to sit down at the negotiating table opposite Ukraine and its western allies to hash out an end to the ******* conflict he began two and a half years ago. Could the behind-the-scenes negotiations for today’s exchange have been a way for the Kremlin to test the water for the West’s receptiveness to striking a deal with Russia ahead of any peace negotiations? And if things don’t go his way, could the President sanction the arrests and false imprisonment of yet more Westerners?

Today the West can breathe a sigh of relief that innocent people can be brought to safety. But the danger posed by Russia has by no means passed.

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#prisoner #swap #high #cost

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