Are Russia and the West preparing for a major exchange of prisoners?

For days there has been news of mysterious disappearances of Russian political prisoners, transferred from prisons to unknown destinations.Many clues point to a major barter between Moscow and the West.But activists urge caution.

• For some days the lawyers of several Russian political prisoners have been reporting that they do not know what happened to their clients.
• Rumors are swirling about a possible major exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West.
• It is not certain that the rumors are real, nor that the operation will be successful:Updates are expected in the next few hours.

Political prisoners mysteriously transferred.Confidential decrees signed by Vladimir Putin.And again, presidential flights intercepted in the skies of Russian regions. Rumors about a possible possibility have been circulating for days maxi exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West.According to some sources, it could happen as early as today or tomorrow.If so, it would be the largest exchange of political prisoners of modern history, both in terms of the number of people and the number of countries involved. But let's go in order.

The mysterious disappearances of Russian political prisoners

For some days the lawyers of several Russian political prisoners have been reporting that they do not know what happened to their clients.From the detention centers they were taken away, without notice and without indication of the location of the transfer, the Russian dissident and co-founder of Memorial Oleg Orlov, opponents and dissidents Vladimir Kara Murza And Ilia Yashin, the collaborators of Alexei Navalny Lilia Chanysheva And Ksenia Fadevva, the pacifist artist Sasha Skochilenko and another artist, accused of collaboration with Ukraine, Daniil Krinari.And then Kevin Lik, a 19-year-old boy with dual Russian and German citizenship, arrested when he was still a minor on charges of treason.

The list of disappearances seems to grow longer by the hour and, according to various sources, the number of political prisoners potentially involved in a hypothetical exchange could vary from ten to thirty people.Second Fox News, Also Evan Gershkovich, the American Wall Street Journal reporter sentenced without evidence to 16 years in prison on espionage charges, could be freed as early as today, August 1st.

The possible prisoner exchange agreement between Russia and the West

If this were the case, it is expected that the exchange would include the release of figures close to the Kremlin and held in Western prisons, as Vadim Krasikov, hitman and former colonel of the Russian security services, sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for murder.In the past, the Russian authorities and Russian President Vladimir Putin had made it quite clear that they were willing to make a similar deal to get Krasikov back.

In the last few hours, they have been in the skies of the Russian regions intercepted of the presidential planes already used in the past for a prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington.Specifically, an An-148, used to exchange arms dealer Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner, the American basketball player arrested in 2022 in Moscow for drugs.According to what the independent Russian press reports, Putin has issued sects decrees reserved which could be pardons for political prisoners.

But the activists urge caution:however eloquent they may be, at the moment they are only clues.There is no guarantee that, in the end, all these prisoners sentenced in Russia for political reasons will actually be released.There are many hypotheses:it could be a ploy to pull the wool over people's eyes, or something could go wrong in the liberation process, or perhaps, indeed, it could be a first step towards a hypothetical peace agreement.

Dmitry Muratov's appeal and the alleged involvement of Belarus

Some weeks ago Dmitry Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize winner, editor of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta (where he worked Anna Politkovskaya), had addressed the leaders of foreign countries with a video message in which he begged them to intervene promptly to exchange Russian citizens detained for political reasons.“We must hurry because many of them simply will not survive,” Muratov says in his appeal.

The curious thing is that in recent days the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko granted pardon to Rico Krieger, a German citizen sentenced to death by firing squad, in the only country in Europe where capital punishment still exists.Krieger had been found guilty of "acts of terrorism" and mercenary, in a case that could be linked to the Kastus Kalinouski regiment, made up of Belarusians fighting against the Russian army alongside Ukraine.Some commentators do not exclude that pardoning Krieger could be one of the pieces of a broader puzzle which could involve, in addition to Russia and the United States, also the Germany, and which could really lead to the liberation of dozens of people.But the case is still in full swing.