The West yielded a hitman, a convicted hacker, and several alleged Russian spies on Thursday as part of the largest prisoner exchange in modern history — as three imprisoned Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, were returned to the United States.
Officials with the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Russia and Belarus met on an airfield tarmac in Ankara, Turkey and swapped at least two dozen people, including Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.
Meanwhile, eight prisoners detained in the West were sent back to Russia, including three from the US.
These are the prisoners who were released back to Russia.
Vadim Krasikov
Vadim Krasikov, a former high-ranking Federal Security Service (FSS) colonel and professional hitman, was on the top of Moscow’s list and a linchpin to the exchange.
The convicted Russian killer was serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of Chechen fighter Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili on orders of the Russian government in 2019. He was convicted by a German court in 2021.
The brutal, broad-daylight killing was a political murder ordered by the Russian government, German prosecutors said.
“The Russian Federation will not leave me to rot in jail,” the murderer once told a guard in prison, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Vladislav Klyushin
The US released convicted hacker Vladislav Klyushin, a businessman with ties to the Kremlin who received a nine-year sentence in a US prison for his participation in a $93 million insider-trading scheme.
The plot involved hacking secret earnings information about multiple companies.
Klyushin was part of a group of hackers that downloaded yet-to-be-announced earnings reports for hundreds of companies including Tesla and Microsoft, which he and others used to trade before the news was public, according to prosecutors.
Roman Seleznev
Roman Seleznev, a convicted hacker and credit card fraudster, was also released by the US to Russia.
Seleznev was sentenced to 27 years in an American prison in 2017 for orchestrating a cyberattack on thousands of American businesses, resulting in $169 million in losses.
The hacker infiltrated point-of-sale systems to steal and sell credit card information.
His sentence was the longest ever imposed for hacking in the United States.
Vadim Konoshchenok
Vadim Konoshchenokm, a suspected officer in Russia’s FSS, was extradited to the US from Estonia last year to face charges he smuggled ammunition and dual-use technology to help Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
He was detained in 2022 while trying to return to Russia from Estonia with about three dozen types of semiconductors and electronic components, according to US prosecutors.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a Russian spy couple, were each sentenced to 19 months in Slovenia Wednesday after pleading guilty to espionage — but were released on time served.
The pair ran an online art gallery and had an IT business while secretly working for Russian intelligence.
Pablo González
Spanish-Russian national Pablo González, whose Russian name is Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, was also returned to Russia.
González, a reporter covering the war in Ukraine for Spanish media, was arrested in Poland on suspicion of conducting intelligence activities in 2022. Poland’s Internal Security Agency identified him as a Russian intelligence agent.
He denied the charges, Voice of America reported.
Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin
Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin was arrested in Norway in 2022 on suspicion of being a Russian spy after claiming to be a Brazilian academic working at the Arctic University of Norway.
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