Germany Grapples With ‘Difficult Decision’ in Prisoner Swap

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Germany Grapples With ‘Difficult Decision’ in Prisoner Swap

The convicted Russian ******* bounded off a plane in Moscow on Thursday, hours after Germany freed him in a wide-ranging prison exchange with Russia. President Vladimir V. ****** hugged him on the tarmac, in a hero’s welcome.

Zurab Khangoshvili, the brother of the Chechen exile shot by the *********, repeatedly scrolled through the video of the scene, watching from his home in Germany with profound sadness, he said.

“It squeezed my heart,” he said, as he thought about his ***** brother. No ******* authorities gave the family advance notice, he said. “That man ******* someone here, and then he went back to Russia to a welcoming ceremony with this huge red carpet. It was unfair.”

Germany played a critical role in the complicated trade that on Thursday secured the release of 16 prisoners to the West in exchange for eight prisoners to Russia. No part of that deal was more fraught than agreeing to release Vadim Krasikov, sentenced to life in prison in 2021 for ******** Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen separatist commander who had sought asylum in Germany.

If the ******* government initially balked at the idea of releasing Mr. Krasikov, the main quest for the Kremlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz eventually overcame the opposition within his government to champion it.

The question now is how the aftermath will play out in Germany. On the one hand, the release violated the longstanding ******* practice that politicians not meddle in court decisions. Yet criticism thus far has been muted, not least because the most vocal critics of the chancellor’s foreign policy all achieved something they wanted, analysts said, be it engaging with Moscow or the moral victory of releasing democracy activists from prison.

“This has never happened before in such a prominent case,” said Alex Yusupov, the director of the Russia program at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a left-leaning political foundation in Berlin.

Just before welcoming 13 released hostages at the airport in Cologne, Germany, on Thursday night, Mr. Scholz said agreeing to free Mr. Krasikov was a “difficult decision” made within the government coalition after long deliberation.

“No one made this decision to deport a ********* sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years of imprisonment lightly,” he said.

Opposition was strong at the federal prosecutor’s office, according to ******* press reports. When Marco Buschmann, the ******* justice minister, ordered the legal authorities to release the convict under a little-used clause in the ******* legal code, he characterized the exchange as a deal for freedom that “was not possible without a bitter concession.”

Analysts believe two factors ultimately pushed the Germans to take such an unprecedented step.

First, the appeal came from President Biden personally, and Mr. Scholz puts great stock in trans-Atlantic relations. Mr. Biden was trying to secure the release of three Americans, including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former Marine who had been in a Russian prison since 2018.

Second, they said, the scope of the overall deal, with the Kremlin releasing five people with ******* citizenship and a raft of Russian democracy activists, was appealing for its humanitarian elements.

“If you release a convicted ********* just to free a ******** that might incentivize further ********-taking,” said Thorsten Benner, the director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin think tank. But, he said, this “was part of a larger deal where it was not just about hostages, but it was about humanism, concern for those fighting for freedom and democracy in Russia.”

The Americans kept the pressure on for months, according to people familiar with the ******* side of the negotiations. Washington had been told that Mr. Krasikov was the essential component of any trade involving the ********* prisoners.

Mr. Scholz seemed to acknowledge that when he said on Thursday that besides his duty to protect ******* citizens, the country’s “solidarity with the U.S.A.” informed his decision.

Within the government, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, initially rejected the idea of trading a felon for political prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a ******* lawmaker.

Initially, one factor pushing Mr. Scholz was the hope of freeing Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who had recovered in Germany from a poisoning in Russia, then was arrested as soon as he returned in 2021. Before that deal came to fruition, however, Mr. Navalny ***** in February under mysterious circumstances in a penal colony in northern Russia.

That derailed the talks for several weeks, but they resumed when Western officials began weighing the number of prisoners they might free in exchange for Mr. Krasikov, according to the people familiar with the ******* side of negotiations.

Some ******* legislators were among those pushing. Sergey Lagodinsky, a senior Green party lawmaker in the ********* Parliament who is close to the Russian opposition, helped push for Mr. Navalny’s release.

While acknowledging that Thursday’s exchange could set a dangerous precedent, Mr. Lagodinsky said it also saved lives. “For me the freedom of 16 innocent people weighs more than the prison time of one *********,” he said.

The decision has prompted some criticism that it might damage Germany’s reputation as a safe haven for refugees, although public support for that sentiment has diminished.

Roderich Kiesewetter, the ************* head of the intelligence oversight committee in Parliament, called the deal “extremely problematic” as a precedent, as a contradiction to the rule of law and as a means of strengthening Russia.

“By pressing for the release of murderers, Russia is trying to create a moral and security dilemma for Western states,” he said in an interview.

Some newspaper columnists also weighed against the decision. With the deal, Silke Bigalke wrote in the ********

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, Mr. ****** was able to emphasize “what his *********** has been inculcating in the Russians for years: that Europe has submitted to the will of Washington. If the Americans exert enough pressure, the Germans will even release prisoners like Krasikov.”

Overall, however, criticism has been subdued. Both the far left and the far right in Germany have long demanded that Berlin be more open to dialogue and negotiations with Moscow, analysts noted, so they are unlikely, at least initially, to criticize a deal that did just that.

Jörg Urban, the leader of Alternative for Germany in the eastern state of Saxony, welcomed the exchange, as it showed that Western diplomats could negotiate with Russia, something his party has long advocated as a way to end the war in Ukraine.

“It’s a sign that gives hope,” he told the

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, a ************* Swiss daily newspaper.

Some parties at the center, also given to bashing Mr. Scholz’s foreign policy, have long considered themselves protectors of the Russian opposition and appear delighted that some of its leading figures are now free in Germany.

Norbert Röttgen of the ********** Democratic Union, a former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag and an ally of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, posted a picture of himself on X with Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading opposition figure released in the exchange.

“In order to save the lives of 16 people, the rule of law has paid a high price,” he wrote. “For me, however, it is more serious that we do not let these people down. This distinguishes us from ******.”

It ******** unclear if the general acceptance will endure. There was no sustained domestic demand for the government to obtain the release of the five Germans in the deal, three of whom had dual Russian citizenship and one of whom was held in Belarus. The other 15 prisoners were held in Russia.

And there were no joyous scenes in Berlin akin to those in Washington and Moscow, with the president standing at the foot of the aircraft stairs to embrace the returning prisoners. Mr. Scholz appeared in what some analysts found a somewhat awkward pose at the Cologne airport without any of the ******* civilians or the Russian opposition figures released.

Then on Friday one of the most prominent Russian opposition figures, Ilya Yashin, said at a news conference that he considered himself pushed into involuntary exile rather than granted any kind of freedom.

“That makes the whole thing ever more complicated for Berlin,” said Mr. Yusupov of the Berlin foundation.

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