At the turn of the century, the West and Russia exchanged prisoners, the biggest deal since the Cold War. Journalist Gershkovich was released. The West swapped Putin’s “assassins”

Gershkovic and other Americans left the Russian plane at an airport in Ankara, Turkey. Gershkovic then took a Turkish bus to the plane lounge. He and other Americans boarded a plane to the United States.

“They are safe, free, and have begun their journey back to the arms of their families,” U.S. President Joe Biden posted on X.

Russia has held the 32-year-old journalist for more than a year on trumped-up espionage charges, and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a high-security penal colony during a secret three-day trial.

Moscow also released former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, journalist Arsu Kurmasheva and Russian-British dissident and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason. Russia has also freed a number of political dissidents. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan confirmed that the prisoner swap deal was supposed to include Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most important opposition leader of the past decade.

The comprehensive deal, involving 24 prisoners from at least six countries, came after months of negotiations at the highest levels of the U.S., Russian and German governments, with Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov proving to be the linchpin of the deal.

Who is Vadim Krasikov?

In the summer of 2013, a Moscow restaurant owner was shot dead in the Russian capital. A masked man jumped off a bicycle, shot the victim twice, and then fled. Six years later, an exiled Chechen commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was shot dead with a silenced Glock 26 by a man on a bicycle in a crowded park in Berlin under similar circumstances, the BBC reported.

The attacker was arrested after throwing a gun and a wig into the Spree River near the Reichstag.

The Berlin assassin was found to be in possession of a passport in the name of “Vadim Sokolov,” but authorities quickly concluded that it was not his name.

The man they arrested was actually Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen with ties to Russia’s security service, the FSB, and the main suspect in the 2013 assassination in Moscow.

According to the prosecutor on trial, Vadim Krasikov belonged to the secret unit “Vympel” of the Russian secret service FSB.

“Its official remit is domestic counter-terrorist operations, but in many ways it’s returned to its original roots of doing the ‘dirty work’ abroad – sabotage and assassinations,” the historian and expert security guard Mark Galeotti told the BBC in Russian.

According to an interview with Insider by Krasikov’s brother-in-law, Krasikov met Putin in person at a shooting range during his service in Vympel, owns a BMW and a Porsche, and travels regularly.

The connection between Krasikov and the Russian Federal Security Service would explain why former foreign intelligence official Vladimir Putin was willing to hand over a prisoner of equal value to Evan Gershkevich.