Russia’s prisoner trade says all you need know about Putin

Take a good look at the lists of prisoners exchanged between Kremlin and the White House this week. If, after that, you still find yourself admiring President Vladimir Putin for his strength and despising US alliances for their “weak” liberalism, you need help.

Putin went in person to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport to hug Vadim Krasikov as he stepped off the plane that brought him home. This is the “patriot” Putin has sought to free ever since he was convicted and jailed in Germany for the 2019 assassination of a Georgian citizen who had fought against Russian forces in Chechnya more than 20 years ago.

Also among those released to Russia were people convicted by independent courts of cybercrimes, insider trading and breaking sanctions. A couple convicted in Slovenia of operating across Europe as deep-cover Russian spies had pled guilty.

What about the other side of the trade? Biden, too, went in person to the airport to greet three Americans released from Russian jails, including Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter absurdly convicted of espionage. Alsu Kurmasheva, a Prague-based editor for Radio Liberty-Radio Free Europe had been jailed while visiting Russia for allegedly spreading false news.

Paul Whelan, who had been dishonorably discharged from the US Marines after a court martial regarding “larceny” in 2008, was convicted of espionage by a Russian court in 2018. Both Whelan and the US government have denied that charge.

The US green card holder and resident Vladimir Kara-Murza was on the initial plane from Moscow to Turkey, too. He had become the most prominent political opponent to Putin after the death in custody earlier this year of Alexei Navalny.

You don’t, of course, expect countries to admit to their spies in public. But the Russian court system so clearly decides such cases at Kremlin direction, rather than in response to evidence, that there’s no reason to give weight to its findings. These people were hostages, collected by Putin to trade for an assassin, criminals and actual spies.

In one sense, this is all par for the course. In 2022, the US basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. Her “crime” had been to pass through Russian customs with less than a gram of medically prescribed hash oil in a vape. But what makes the latest trade extraordinary is that it required the cooperation of multiple countries and included eight Russian dissidents with no connection to any of them.

According to Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist who has been lobbying for this assassins-for-innocents deal since 2021, the original idea was for Germany to give up Krasikov in exchange for Navalny. The latter had been treated in Germany after being poisoned in Russia with the nerve agent, Novichok. When the 47-year-old later died in an Arctic penal colony, it was Germany that insisted on the release of multiple Russian dissidents if it was still to let go of an assassin.

As Biden has pointed out, this was not obviously in Germany’s self-interest; it got no Germans back. Nor did Slovenia get any Slovenes back. They acted to benefit their US ally and a group of particularly selfless Russians. Among the eight dissidents were other Putin opponents, as well as civil rights activists such as Oleg Orlov, co-chair of the Nobel Prize-winning Memorial organization that for 30 years had been exposing instances of Soviet-era domestic repression.

For sure, this exchange was a political win for Biden. For sure, it was also a win for ex-KGB officer Putin, who again demonstrated to his black-ops agents and spies that they can carry out future work abroad safe in the knowledge that they won’t be left to rot in jail if caught. I can’t imagine a clearer exposition of the difference, and meaning, of the people and values that each side prioritizes, nor of the worth of alliances.

Democracies, of course, run spy networks, kill people and do bad stuff. There are no angels among states. But unlike Putin’s Russia, that does not define them. To live with the rule of law— no matter how imperfect— is a fundamentally different experience than to live without it. Equally, alliances may be awkward and frustrating, but their value is not defined by that frustration, nor solely by what they spend on defense, important as that is.

It’s tempting to admire strongmen like Putin, or even wannabe strongmen like Donald Trump. They have more freedom of action, don’t have to obey laws and don’t have to compromise with their own side before facing foreign competitors. They seem better able to get things done, even if Trump’s claim that he could have gotten a better deal sounds ridiculous.

What matters is to recognize what it is that actually gets done by these leaders: arbitrary law, domestic repression, hostage-taking and the prizing of state assassins over individual rights. There is really nothing to admire here, or to wish for.