Journalists and dissidents freed in prisoner exchange between Russia and West

Putin hitman Vadim Krasikov among eight Russians released

- JUSTIN ROHRLICH TOM WATLING ANDREW FEINBERG

Journalist Evan Gershkovich and US marine Paul Whelan have been released from jail in Russia in the biggest prisoner swap with the West since the end of the Cold War.

After months of complex negotiations involving several countries, the Kremlin also released British-Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, a staunch critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mr Kara-Murza was given a 25-year sentence in April 2023 on charges including treason, after he hit out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That sentence remains the longest handed out to a Kremlin critic since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Also on the list: Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was convicted for violating a Russian law targeting foreign journalists by forcing them to register as foreign agents; anti-war artist and writer Aleksandra Skochilenko, who was convicted last autumn of “disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian armed forces;” dissident politician Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in late 2022 for denouncing the Ukraine invasion; a pair of former staffers for late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; and RussianGerman dual citizen Kevin Lik, who, at 19, remains the youngest person ever to be convicted of treason in Russia.

Mr Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the city of Yekaterinburg and was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage last month in a brief, behind-closed-doors trial. He pleaded not guilty and the charges against him have been dismissed as nonsense by governments around the world. It came during Mr Putin’s crackdown on dissent in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has seen relations between Russia and the West fall to a decades-long low.