When eight Russian citizens, including a convicted FSB hitman, stepped off a plane in Moscow on Thursday at the end of a historic prisoner swap with the West, Vladimir Putin hailed them as heroes in what could be a good move for him.
A total of 24 people were freed that day, allowing 16 of them to head west, including American journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, and eight others to return to Russia (including a couple with their two children), including individuals the Kremlin has since confirmed were secret service agents.
“I want to congratulate all of you on your return to your motherland,” President Putin told them, assuring them that Russia had never forgotten them. “Not even for a minute.”
The message was clear, both to the spies and cybercriminals fresh off the plane, but also to all Russian agents around the world: even if you are caught, the Kremlin will support you.
“For the target audience, Putin has brought his soldiers home, the heroes of a hybrid third world war,” says Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev.
“And the public is not only the special services, but millions of people who feel like citizens of a country at war with a more powerful enemy,” he adds.
Among those who returned to Russian soil were a couple of clandestine agents established in Slovenia with Argentinian passports, a hacker and a suspected military intelligence officer posing as a researcher in Norway.
But for Vladimir Putin, the main reason for satisfaction was the return of Vadim Krasikov, a member of an elite FSB unit released by Germany, where he had been sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of a former Chechen separatist commander.
A former Soviet KGB officer himself and director of its Russian heir apparent, the FSB, the Russian president has long insisted that Krasikov be part of a prisoner swap, despite Berlin’s reluctance.
The deal will create “increased loyalty” among spies and intelligence henchmen, said Abbas Gallyamov, an independent political analyst and former Kremlin correspondent.
“Putin can count on them to work with even greater devotion,” he said.
“Win-win”
In the West, the episode has raised fears that the Russian president may be tempted to take more prisoners in a form of “hostage diplomacy.”
The Kremlin said Friday it was determined to secure the release of more Russians it considers to be unjustly detained in Western countries.
Over the past two years, Russia has “blatantly” detained Westerners for possible exchange “while negotiations with the West have stalled” over the conflict in Ukraine, notes Tatiana Stanovaya, a researcher at the Carnegie Center.
Russia and the West have a long history of prisoner swaps, most notably in 2022, when American basketball player Brittney Griner was traded for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
With Thursday’s deal, which includes not only foreigners but also Russian dissidents, Moscow is reminding “the whole world of its repression, disdain for laws and cruelty towards critics of the authorities,” M wrote.me Stanovaïa in an article.
Before the 2022 deals involving first Marine Trevor Reed and then Brittney Griner, the deals typically involved mutual spy swaps.
Moscow tried to present Thursday’s agreement in the same light.
Messrs. Gershkovich and Whelan were convicted of “espionage” — a charge the White House said was baseless — and the FSB said the released Russian dissidents had “acted in the interests of foreign states to the detriment of the security of Russia.”
For the West, the arrest of Evan Gershkovich in particular – the first “espionage” case against a foreign journalist in Russia since the Cold War – demonstrated that the Kremlin was prepared to cross red lines.
Russia may be tempted to see this new exchange as a “great success and a tremendous victory,” political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann said in an interview with the Russian opposition channel Dozhd.
But, she said, the reality is more nuanced.
“Russia gets eight losers “Clumsy people who didn’t do the job and got caught, she wants to believe. While she releases people who, if they want and have the opportunity, will become public figures of some weight.”