Who are the prisoners released and exchanged by Russia, the US and their allies?

Russia, the United States and their allies have exchanged a total of 26 prisoners at Ankara airport, under the coordination of the Turkish intelligence services (MIT), Turkish network NTV reported on Thursday.

According to the above-mentioned station, there are 26 people, including soldiers and journalists, from seven countries, who have been sent by plane to Ankara for exchange. According to The initiatethese are the exchanged prisoners:

PRISONERS IN WESTERN JAILS

-Vadim Krasikov

He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a Chechen in Germany and German authorities believe he belonged to the FSB and was following orders from Moscow.

-Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva

The couple Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who lived in Slovenia and pretended to be Argentine citizens Ludwig Gisch and Maria Rosa Mayer Muñoz, were arrested in Ljubljana in late 2022. Police identified them by comparing the pseudo-Argentinians’ fingerprints with those of the Dultseva, which were in the possession of Interpol. The day before the prisoner exchange, they confessed to being spies.

-Pablo Gonzalez

Basque journalist of Russian origin who served almost two and a half years in prison without any charges being brought against him.

-Roman Seleznev

He is a Russian computer hacker, also known by his hacker name Track2. Seleznev was charged and convicted in the United States in 2011 for hacking servers to steal credit card information. The activities are estimated to have caused more than $169 million in damages to businesses and financial institutions. Specifically, on July 5, 2014, while vacationing in the Maldives, he was arrested and sentenced to 27 years in prison for wire fraud, malicious damage to a protected computer, and identity theft.

-Vladislav Klyushin

He is a Russian businessman, founder and CEO of M-13, a Russian company that provides cybersecurity and media monitoring services. In March 2021, he was arrested upon arrival in Switzerland on a warrant issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, charging him with insider trading using confidential data stolen from U.S. companies. Klyushin was convicted by a federal jury on February 14, 2023, on charges of conspiracy, bank fraud, and securities fraud.

-Mikhail Mikushin

In May 2022, a court in Norway accused an employee of the Arctic University of Tromsø of espionage and published his full name. The spy turned out to be Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin, born on August 19, 1978. He pretended to be Brazilian citizen José Assis Giammaria, born in 1984, and had worked successfully at the Norwegian University of Tromsø in recent years.

-Vadim Konoshchenok

Konoshchenok was one of the members of the Serniya smuggling network, which was involved in the illegal export of high-tech equipment from the United States to Russian state-owned companies via the EU. Konoshchenok was detained in November 2022 in Narva, Estonia, while transporting smuggled goods to Russia. U.S. authorities suggest he served in Russian intelligence, and not just as a smuggler.

PRISONERS IN RUSSIAN AND BELARUSIAN PRISONS

-Evan Gershkovich

He is a journalist from Wall Street Journal accused of espionage, arrested by Russian authorities in March 2023 and recently sentenced to 16 years in prison.

-Vladimir Kara-Murza

He is a Russian politician, journalist, author, filmmaker and opposition figure. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he is the vice-president of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Moscow court on charges of high treason, collaboration with NATO countries and spreading false information about the Russian military during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

-Paul Whelan

He is a former Marine who has been held since 2018 and was sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison in 2020 for espionage.

-Ilya Yashin

He is a Russian opposition politician who led the PARNAS party between 2012 and 2016 and now heads its Moscow branch. In June 2022, he was arrested and later charged under new wartime censorship laws for spreading false news about the armed forces. In December 2022, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

-Alsu Kurmasheva

Russian-American journalist sentenced to 6.5 years in prison by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia) for “spreading false information” about the Russian military. She worked as an editor of the Tatar-Baskir service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

-Oleg Orlov

Activist who participated in post-Soviet human rights movements. Orlov was awarded the 2009 Sakharov Prize in recognition of his work in the field of human rights. He is a member of the federal political council movement Solidarnost. On February 27, 2024, a Moscow court found him guilty of “discrediting” the Russian military. The sentence was two years and six months in prison.

-Alexandra Skochilenko

Also known as Sasha Skochilenko, she is a Russian artist, musician, political prisoner and poet, former editor at The newspaper. Skochilenko was arrested on April 11, 2022 for distributing anti-war leaflets in a supermarket. On November 16, 2023, the Vasileostrovsky District Court in St. Petersburg sentenced Skochilenko to 7 years in prison under Russia’s “fake news” law for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war messages containing information about civilian deaths in Ukraine.

-Andrei Pivovarov

In July 2022, Andrei Pivovarov, an opposition activist, human rights defender and former leader of the now-dismantled Otkrytaya Rossiya (Open Russia) movement, was sentenced to four years in prison.

-Ksenia Fadeeva

The Siberian deputy was sentenced to nine years in prison on extremism charges for collaborating with late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. She was first arrested in late 2021 over her relationship with the jailed politician and his Anti-Corruption Fund, which was declared extremist that same year after she denounced illegal enrichment in public administration.

-Lilia Chanysheva

She is a Russian opponent and partner of Alexei Navalny. On June 14, 2023, Chanysheva was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges of extremism.

-Vadim Ostanin

He is another Russian opponent and colleague of Navalny. He was arrested in December 2021 after being accused of “participation in an extremist community”. According to the version of the Russian Investigative Committee, the activist continued to work in Navalny’s organizations after they were recognized as “extremist”. Ostanin was sentenced to nine years in prison in July last year.

-Rico Krieger

Rico Krieger, a former German Red Cross doctor, was detained in Belarus in October 2023. It was alleged that Krieger entered Belarus in October 2023 disguised as a tourist, but was in fact on a mission for Ukrainian security services. He allegedly removed an improvised explosive device from a cache on October 5 and placed it on train tracks. Krieger was sentenced to death. Alexander Lukashenko pardoned Krieger on July 30, 2024.

-Herman Moyzhes

On May 28, Russian-German citizen Herman Moyzhes, a lawyer and activist, was arrested and later charged with treason.

-Kevin Lik

Lik, 18, became the first Russian student to be convicted of high treason. He was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2023. According to the court, he photographed the deployment sites of a military unit in Maykop, a city in southern Russia, and emailed the images to a “representative of a foreign state.” Lik holds Russian and German passports.

-Demuri (Dieter) Voronin

The 45-year-old political scientist, a citizen of both Russia and Germany, was charged in the case of journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov, a former defense reporter for the newspaper Commersant And Vedomostiwas tried with secret evidence and in 2022 found guilty of high treason and sentenced to 22 years in prison. In March 2023, the Moscow City Court found Voronin guilty of state treason and sentenced him to 13 years and 3 months in a maximum-security prison.

-Patrick Schöbel

German citizen Patrick Schobel, 38, was arrested on February 14, 2024, upon arriving at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport from Istanbul on charges of possession of cannabis gummies and drug trafficking. Schobel was awaiting the conclusion of the trial at the time of their exchange.