The recent exchange of individuals between Russia and other countries has sparked intrigue and speculation. On one side, we have Russian political prisoners, and on the other, Russian spies and a professional assassin. This is essentially all we know at the moment. It will take years to piece together the full picture of what transpired between Omsk, Washington, Moscow, Ankara, Cologne, and several other locations on the map. For ordinary people, this map has been torn apart for years, with no flights between them, closed borders, and convincing explanations for why this divide is natural and cannot be changed. But as it turns out, it can; planes will fly, and from eternity in prison to freedom, it only takes a few hours in the sky.
Let’s imagine sixteen passengers in one cabin. Among them is the most consistent opponent of the Putin regime, who has been opposing it for nearly twenty years and has never compromised himself for the sake of the opposition’s strategy of „fighting your own to make others fear.“ Behind him is a German man arrested in Russia for having six gummy bears laced with marijuana in his possession.
Two years ago, when the world witnessed the massacre in Bucha, the company that produced these gummy bears was hesitant to leave Russia. Meanwhile, a young artist in St. Petersburg decided to go to the supermarket and replace price tags with stickers displaying the number of victims. For this act, she received seven years in prison, and now she is also on board the plane. Next to her is a human rights defender in his seventies: when she was born, he and his colleagues had just succeeded in installing the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square.
Alexei Navalny is not on this flight – the exchange began with him, and perhaps because of it, he was killed in prison. But if he were flying, his seatmate would be Demuri Voronin. He received 13 years for treason in the same case as journalist Ivan Safronov – who received 22 years, but Voronin was exchanged (he is a German citizen), while Safronov was not. Navalny refused to consider Safronov a journalist, calling him amoral and deceitful, exclaiming, „Vanya just loves money.“
This would be the flight.
These individuals are not united by anything except that they were in Russian prisons on unjust charges. Their presence on board in this composition is akin to surviving a car accident: how you ended up in it has no bearing on your chances of survival.
One would like to see some logic, but there is no rational logic.
In Moscow, at the same time, a plane lands. A sturdy man in a tracksuit emerges, about whom we know for certain only that he is a killer. His biography is a series of separate dots. He served in the FSB, okay. He killed various people, including some businessmen. (For what? Did they threaten the interests of the country, as understood by the intelligence services? Or was there some commercial interest involved?)
In Berlin, in broad daylight, he killed a former field commander from the Chechen war named Khangoshvili. Why? He is not Shamil Basayev or Ahmed Zakayev – very different people, but we know their names well, while this individual is relatively unknown. The murder occurred many years after the war ended. It only became symbolic for Germans – a signal from Putin that he can and wants to kill on the streets of European cities. Was this intentional? Or was it something else?
Now the sturdy man in a tracksuit descends the ramp, greeted by an honor guard – and Putin. Putin embraces him and says, „Great!“ Are they acquainted? Did they meet during their time in the FSB, or is there something else that binds them? Putin did not come to the airport to embrace his godfather Viktor Medvedchuk when he was extradited by Ukraine. He did not embrace the parents of conscripts who died on the cruiser „Moskva.“ He did not embrace the widows of submariners from the „Kursk.“ What makes this man so dear to him?
Perhaps it is the logic of a corporation? Then it makes sense: mobilized individuals can be thrown into a pit, citizens with passports can be ignored when they are taken hostage by Lukashenko, but a colleague from the intelligence services is a different matter.
Perhaps that is the logic; perhaps it is something else. But what is important for us is that, in the end, all of this was for Vadim Krasikov, the man in the tracksuit, and the plane with the political prisoners was also for him.
It makes sense to outline the chain of events surrounding the exchange, as some German media outlets currently report it. It goes like this: the US was prepared to exchange its citizens, including for Krasikov, but Germany was not ready. After all, he is a killer, which means Russia receives a signal: it can continue to extract its criminals, it just needs to torment its political prisoners more (there are already over a thousand, a simple task). Despite the resistance of the German Foreign Ministry, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was eventually persuaded – and it was done by Joe Biden. The German condition was: okay, but then let’s release some of the most important political prisoners along with the Germans: if they are not our citizens but enemies of Putin, then this is not just an exchange, but also a humanitarian mission.
For you (and for me), this all sounds like news from Mars. Why am I recounting this, especially since I do not know and cannot verify if it happened this way? Simply because I see this again: there is logic in this, but it is a completely different kind. For example, you may think that Eugene Berkovich and Svetlana Petrychuk should be released – but they did not even have a faint chance of being on this list; and Ilya Yashin, for example, could have been included not due to his own long journey, but because of his association with Alexei Navalny (among those released were former heads of his regional headquarters).
I believe that the main thing an ordinary observer can take away from this exchange is the emotion. The emotion of relief, liberation, joy, and happiness for those who risked their lives every day in Putin’s prisons. Prisons that no one deserves, especially these individuals.
But this emotion is tinged with bitterness for those who did not make it. And with fear for those who did not draw the lucky ticket and faced this morning in the camp.
I think this complex emotion is a rehearsal of what awaits us when the war ends. So much has been said about victory in these years, but I believe that the end will be just like this. When it is revealed that those who were under mortal threat yesterday are alive, and we can breathe a sigh of relief. That those who did not manage to fall under this threat no longer face it, and we can breathe a sigh of relief. That those who have already perished – have perished forever, and death has equalized those who died on the first day of the war and those who died on the very last. That there was justice in the war, there was meaning that both sides explained to themselves in their own way. And now, just a few hours after its end, it is impossible to feel either.
If the exchange is ultimately Putin’s whim, to which the whole world has agreed, it is difficult to feel victorious in this. But there is victory in this: it is the victory of life over death. Those he was slowly killing are alive. This includes those who helped them survive: those who wrote letters, those who attended court hearings, and those who liked a post from behind bars, knowing it was unsafe.
It was not in vain – and that means it is worth doing for those who were not lucky on August 1st. Besides Yashin, there is Alexei Gorin – the first person imprisoned for calling the war a war (at a meeting of a few people). Besides Voronin, there is Ivan Safronov. Besides the dozen released – now known worldwide – there are a thousand others who are less known or not known at all.
They do not have a chance for a miraculous release. But there is a chance for a non-miraculous one.
Today is a good day to write a letter to one of them.
The views expressed in the project’s publications reflect solely the authors‘ opinions, which may not coincide with the position of the Kennan Institute or the Wilson Center.