Behind prisoner swap: Spies, a killer, secret messages, unseen diplomacy

By Mark Mazzetti, Anton Troianovski, Michael D Shear & Peter Baker

A turning point came on June 25, when a group of CIA officers sat across from their Russian counterparts during a secret meeting in a Middle Eastern capital.

The Americans floated a proposal: An exchange of two dozen prisoners sitting in jails in Russia, the United States and scattered across Europe, a far bigger and more complex deal than either side had previously contemplated but one that would give both Moscow and Western nations more reasons to say yes.

Quiet negotiations between the United States and Russia over a possible prisoner swap had dragged on for more than a year. They were punctuated by only occasional glimpses of hope for the families of the American prisoners — including Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, an American security contractor — growing increasingly impatient for their ordeal to end. Those hopes were always dashed when one of the two sides balked.

But the June meeting changed things, according to accounts from American and Western officials and other people familiar with the long process of bringing the deal to fruition.

The Russian spies took the proposal back to Moscow, and only days later the CIA director was on the phone with a Russian spy chief agreeing to the broad parameters of a massive prisoner swap. On Thursday, seven different planes touched down in Ankara, Turkey, and exchanged passengers, brin­ging to a successful close an intens­ive diplomatic effort that took place almost entirely out of public view.

The deal between longtime adversaries — negotiated mostly by spies and sometimes through secret messages hand-delivered by couriers — secured the release of  Gershkovich, Whelan and 14 other Americans, Russians and Europeans imprisoned in Russia.

The deal also freed, among others, a Russian hit man, Vadim Krasikov. He had been jailed in Germany since 2019 for the murder of a Chechen former separatist fighter in a park in Berlin. He was the prize most sought by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who had publicly praised the killing as an act of patriotism and for years had insisted that Mr. Krasikov be part of any swap.

The stunning deal took place against the geopolitical backdrop of the bloody war in Ukraine, where the United States is sending deadly weapons to the battlefront aimed at killing as many Russian troops as possible. And it reached its conclusion even as President Biden, who got personally involved in the negotiations at key points, was slowly losing hope of continuing his reelection bid following a disastrous televised debate that took place two days after the CIA gave the Russians what proved to be the decisive new offer. On the morning of Sunday, July 21, Biden, sick with Covid, placed a call from his vacation home in Delaware to Slovenia’s prime minister to nail down one of the last pieces of the prisoner agreement. Less than two hours later, he announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race. “The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship,” Biden said on Thursday in brief remarks from the White House, flanked by family members of the prisoners. He praised America’s allies, saying that “they stood with us, and they made bold and brave decisions, released prisoners being held in their countries.” “This is a very good afternoon,” said Mr. Biden, who has had few of those in the past several months. “A very good afternoon.”

American officials on Thursday insisted that the prisoner swap was by no means the advent of a new détente between Washington and Moscow.