The United States and others negotiated the release of 16 prisoners from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners, according to President Joe Biden. The other Americans released were Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
“Today, we celebrate the return of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir and rejoice with their families,” Biden said in a statement.
Turkish intelligence said on Aug. 1 that it was coordinating an extensive prisoner exchange between Eastern and Western blocs.
“Our organization has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, before heading back to the Russian capital.
The Americans Gershkovich and Whelan were imprisoned in Russia under dubious circumstances, with Russia accusing Gershkovich and Whelan of being spies.
The exchange is part of a larger, 26-person prisoner swap between the United States, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Slovenia on one side, and Russia and Belarus on the other, with Turkey acting as an intermediary between the two sides.
For its part, Russia is expected to receive eight prisoners of its own back, including some with ties to Russian intelligence.
Among them is Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of murder in Germany in 2019, which the judges in his case described as an assassination ordered by Russian authorities.
Vinnik previously pleaded guilty to money laundering in a case related to the unlawful use of $4 billion in cryptocurrency at the BTC-e exchange, for which he oversaw finances.
That same firm handled Bitcoin transactions for Fancy Bear, a Russian hacking group possibly connected to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, and which was believed to be behind cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016 and later hacks on the Ukrainian military.
Russian state media reported that Vinnik was among four Russians jailed in the United States who disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons.
It named the other three as Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok, and Vladislav Klyushin.
Klyushin, like Vinnik, was also associated with co-conspirators that the Justice department described as being involved in “a scheme to interfere with the 2016 United States elections.”
