Three US citizens to be released

The United States has confirmed that 24 people are involved in the incident. prisoner exchange between Russia and several Western countries including the United States and Germany.

Among the prisoners released were US citizen Evan Gershkovich – a reporter for the Wall Street Journal – and Former US Marine Paul Whelan.

Under the agreement, Russian security service assassin Vadim Krasikov was released by Germany.

There has been speculation for days about a major exchange between Russia and Western countries, fueled by reports that several prisoners were moved from their cells in Russian prisons to unknown locations.

American journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison at a high-security prison earlier this month, after being convicted of espionage.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first detained in March last year while on a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow, by security services.

Prosecutors allege he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), allegations that Mr. Gershkovich, the WSJ and the U.S. government all vehemently deny.

It is the first time an American journalist has been convicted of espionage in Russia since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago. After his initial arrest, he was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.

Paul WhelanThe 54-year-old was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spying in 2018.

The former US Marine is a citizen of four countries – the US, Canada, Britain and Ireland. His lawyer said he is being held in a prison in the Mordovia region.

After being discharged from the army in 2008 for bad behaviour, he became a security consultant and began travelling between Russia and the UK for work.

In December 2018, he was arrested by Russia’s FSB state security service, which claimed he had been “caught red-handed spying” in Moscow. His family has always denied the allegations.

On the same day Mr. Gershkovich was sentenced, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in a medium-security prison after a secret trial.

She was an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US government, and was convicted of spreading disinformation about the Russian military.

Her husband, Pavel Butorin, previously said she was arrested over a book published last year that included stories about Russians protesting the war in Ukraine.

Ms. Kurmasheva, who holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was detained in June 2023 while visiting her mother in Russia.

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a prominent Russian dissident and one of the most vocal opponents of the Putin regime, as well as a vocal critic of the war in Ukraine and the internal repression of dissidents in Russia.

In 2023, the 42-year-old was sentenced to 25 years in prison for spreading “false” information about the Russian military and having ties to an “undesirable organization”.

Mr Kara-Murza – a former journalist and politician – has denied all charges.

The dual British-Russian citizen served his sentence in a Siberian prison, where his wife said he suffered from mental illness as a result of poisoning.

One of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures, Ilya Yashin, was jailed in 2022 for “spreading fake news” about the country’s military.

He was arrested after denouncing suspected Russian war crimes in Bucha.

Following the death of former opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, Mr Yashin said he feared for his life.

He has previously accused President Vladimir Putin of being “mad with power” in a series of letters from prison in the western Smolensk region where he is being held.

Oleg Orlov is a Russian human rights activist who was jailed in February for calling Russia a fascist state and criticizing the war in Ukraine. He was previously president of the Nobel Prize-winning Memorial organization.

The 71-year-old was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian armed forces.

In his appeal against his sentence in July, he compared the Russian justice system to that of Nazi Germany.

His sentence was handed down after a retrial. At his original trial in October last year, he was fined 150,000 roubles (£1,290; $1,630) and released from custody. His subsequent sentence marked a harsher crackdown on anti-war protesters.

Lilia Chanysheva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison earlier this year after being accused by authorities of extremist behaviour.

She was a local coordinator for the anti-corruption network of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Initially sentenced to seven years in prison in 2023, prosecutors appealed the sentence, telling officials it was too lenient. She was most recently held in a detention center in the Perm region.

Ms Chanysheva is the first of Mr Navalny’s allies to be convicted on such charges. Most of his other activists have fled Russia into exile.

Ksenia Fadeyeva has been sentenced to nine years in prison after being charged with organising an extremist group.

She was a local organizer for Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where she was later detained.

Her lawyers argued that she ended her relationship with the organization before it was designated an extremist group in 2021.

Most of Mr Navalny’s former staff and allies have been forced to flee Russia into exile in recent years, as the Kremlin has intensified its crackdown on opposition groups.

Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison for replacing supermarket price labels with anti-war messages in November as a form of protest.

Alternative labels drew attention to the deaths of civilians in Mariupol and said Russia had become a “fascist state”.

The artist from St Petersburg has been held in a detention center in the city since April 2023.

German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik was convicted of treason as a teenager, becoming the youngest person ever convicted.

He grew up in Germany and moved to Russia when he was 12 years old.

In December last year, authorities sentenced him to four years in prison for emailing images to “representatives of a foreign state” before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The court heard he visited and photographed Russian military “deployment sites”.

German citizen Rico Krieger is accused of planting explosives in Belarus and was sentenced to death, before being pardoned by the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko earlier this week.

In a carefully staged interview with state media, he said he was acting on instructions from Ukraine, but provided no evidence.

He is believed to be the first Western citizen to be sentenced to death in Belarus.

Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov heads Russian Open-End Fundwas founded by former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served a decade in prison for campaigning against Mr Putin.

He was arrested in 2021 after trying to leave the country from St Petersburg, accused of directing an “undesirable organisation”.

Russian-German citizen Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “high treason” after Moscow accused him of receiving secret military information from another journalist, Ivan Safronov, who remains in custody, AFP reported.

Other German citizens released by Russia are:

• Patrick Schoebel, who was detained in St Petersburg earlier this year, after reportedly being found with a packet of cannabis gummies
• Herman Moyzhes, a Russian-German immigration lawyer, is facing treason charges after being arrested in May.
• Vadim Ostanin, former director of one of Alexei Navalny’s regional branches, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023.

One of the highest-profile prisoners released back to Russia was Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Vadim Krasikov, who had serving a life sentence in Germany about the assassination of an exiled Chechen commander in a Berlin park in 2019.

During his trial, prosecutors said he acted on Russian orders and belonged to the FSB’s highly secretive Vympel unit.

His defense attorneys insisted he was a construction worker, not a killer. He denied being called Krasikov, and identified himself as Vadim Sokolov, the name on the passport he was traveling under.

In a recent interview with American talk show host Tucker Carlson, Putin hinted that his country was looking to release “patriot” Krasikov in exchange for American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Roman Seleznev is convicted of running a hacking program in 2017 causing $169m (£131m) in damage.

U.S. officials say he stole credit card data from restaurants and sold it on the black market. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the crime, which prosecutors say he committed between 2009 and 2013.

According to the Justice Department, Mr. Seleznev used software that allowed him to steal millions of credit card numbers from thousands of businesses.

His father is Valery Seleznev, a lawmaker and ally of Mr Putin.

The United States has charged Vadim Konoshchenok with conspiracy to procure and launder money on behalf of the Russian government in 2022.

He is also believed to be an FSB agent.

At the time, a statement from the US Justice Department said he and others illegally purchased and exported highly sensitive electronic components, some of which could be used for military purposes.

Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested and convicted of espionage in Slovenia.

Each was sentenced to 19 months in prison. Their two children also returned to Russia with them.

University lecturer Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin was charged with gathering intelligence in Norway on behalf of Russia in 2022 while posing as a Brazilian academic.

Norwegian officials said he had a Brazilian passport and had been working as a researcher at the University of Tromso since 2021.

It is believed that he used the name José Assis Giammaria.

Mr Mikushin is also said to have lied about his age and was actually 44, not 37, when he was charged.

Little information has been made public about other Russians involved in the exchange.

Vladislav Klyushin, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in the United States for insider trading, is also on the list.

Spanish-Russian journalist Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov was arrested in Poland in February 2022, just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Polish authorities accused him of using his freelance journalism as a cover for intelligence activities.

This story will be updated as the names of more released prisoners are confirmed.