Putin’s arrest tactics pay off as Russia brings home its own — even a killer

Vladimir Putin on Thursday secured the release of spies, hackers and his most coveted Russian prisoner in the West: a assassin linked to intelligence services convicted of murder in Germany. For the authoritarian Russian leader, it was the biggest victory yet stemming from his willingness to violate global norms to extract what he wants from Western leaders.

Putin hinted at his determination to win the freedom of the assassin, Vadim Krasikov, during an interview in February with American conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, calling Krasikov “patriotic” without actually naming him and indicating he was open to a prisoner exchange involving American journalist Evan Gershkovich, whom Russia accused of espionage.

In a quarter-century as Russia’s supreme political leader, Putin has repeatedly shown disdain for a global rules-based order, invading Georgia and Ukraine, seizing territory by force, carrying out assaults and assassinations on foreign territory and arresting foreigners in Russia for minor offenses or concocted charges, a practice known as “hostage diplomacy.”

[US and Russia complete biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, freeing Gershkovich and Whelan]

Western responses were often timid, either to preserve diplomatic and business ties, to avoid escalation, or to address domestic political imperatives. Those responses only emboldened Putin, according to analysts.

Thursday’s major prisoner exchange highlighted the heavy imbalance that has become typical of such deals, with Russia winning the release of individuals convicted of serious crimes while the West is focused on its own citizens jailed on trivial or baseless charges, or even on Russia’s own citizens who are the victims of political persecution by Putin’s government.

In 2022, for instance, President Biden agreed to trade the convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the “merchant of death,” for basketball star Brittney Griner, convicted in Russia of possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil.

But even in that context, the deal for Krasnikov, a convicted killer, seemed to cross a new threshold.

Krasikov was with the Vympel special elite group of the Federal Security Service according to the investigative online news site Bellingcat, which first identified him.

He was convicted of a brazen 2019 attack a Berlin park. In broad daylight, he jumped off a bicycle, pulled out a Glock 26 pistol with a silencer and gunned down Georgian-born Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former rebel in the separatist Chechen wars. Krasikov fled but was caught after dumping the gun and a wig in the Spree River.

Although Russia has a long list of prisoners in American and European jails, Krasikov was especially important to Putin, who has defended him publicly more than once, while portraying his victim, Khangoshvili, as a terrorist who committed atrocities.

Putin, a former KGB agent, shares a loyalty code to Russian spies and other operatives captured overseas, and bringing Krasikov home reinforces a powerful promise to Russia’s security services that, to the greatest extent possible, none who serve the Fatherland will be left behind.

Securing Krasikov’s release during wartime, with relations with the West at an all-time low because of the invasion and occupation of Ukraine, makes it all the more a personal triumph for Putin.

Krasikov had been on a shooting range in Putin’s presence and saw him shoot, according to an interview of Alexandr Vodorez published in 2021 by Bellingcat, the Insider and Der Spiegel. Vodorez is a Ukrainian whose wife’s sister married the assassin. According to Vodorez, Krasikov was an FSB operative in the Vympel group who was on the ground at Ukrainian protests during the 2013-2014 Maidan revolution against former president Viktor Yanukovych.

Krasikov, like other freed Russian operatives, is expected to be given a hero’s welcome and potentially a medal on his return to Moscow. Security agents previously traded back to Russia have been given plum government jobs and some have even become celebrities.

Western officials have acknowledged the rising problem of “hostage diplomacy” but have seemed powerless to stop it.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said hostage diplomacy was a “rising trend” that violated international law and human rights.

“Increasingly, states - but also non-state actors - are wrongfully detaining people, often as political pawns,” Blinken said. “This practice threatens the safety of everyone who travels, conducts business, who lives abroad.”

Blinken was speaking at an event to mark the third anniversary of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, an initiative launched by Canada after two of its citizens, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, were arrested by China and accused of espionage.

Kovrig and Spavor were detained shortly after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, acting on a U.S. arrest warrant for fraud.

Experts say China and Russia are global leaders in using prisoners for leverage. Iran and North Korea are also known to use the tactic. Moscow has often accused the West of hypocrisy and overreach and the U.S. in particular of acting unjustly as the world’s policeman. Bout, for example, was arrested in Thailand in an elaborate sting operation that enraged Russia.

Trials in the West, however, are typically held in open court with public evidence, unlike in Russia or China, where evidence is often secret, and the rights of defendants are severely limited. Russia’s judicial system is highly politicized, used to crush the opposition, and more than 99.5 percent of prosecutions result in convictions, according to the judicial department of Russia’s Supreme Court.

Once citizens are arrested by hostile nations, experts say, their governments have no good options - forced to leave their citizens to languish in foreign jails, often in extremely harsh conditions, or negotiate a deal, sending the morally fraught message that hostage-taking works.

In the case of Canada and China in 2021, the countries later released the detainees at around the same time.

Before Thursday’s exchange, around two dozen Americans were being held in Russian prisons, including two deemed by the State Department to be wrongfully detained, Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.

They included another journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen - who was returned in the exchange, and others left behind, including schoolteacher Marc Fogel, and a Los Angeles-based beautician, Ksenia Karelina, another dual citizen.

Germany’s agreement to hand over Krasikov was remarkable, given that a German judge called the killing “state terrorism” carried out on the orders of the Russian security services and sentenced him to life in prison. In response, Germany expelled two Russian diplomats in 2021, and German politicians have been highly resistant to exchanges, ruling them out in the past.

Despite all that, Berlin flipped its position earlier this year when it agreed to exchange Krasikov for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny just before his death in prison in February, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

Navalny’s wife and close associates have accused Putin of ordering him killed to prevent that exchange - a charge the Kremlin vehemently denied.

Getting Germany back on board for an exchange required including some of Russia’s most prominent jailed dissidents, which further highlighted the imbalance in the exchange between Moscow and the West.

The growing practice of powerful nations like Russia and China taking Western citizens as prisoners encourages to other nations to do the same, subtly shifting the global rules, and creating uncertainty that can be exploited to push back against norms in other spheres.

It also dramatically heightens the risks for journalists, aid workers and business executives, particularly those working in conflict zones and fragile states where non-state actors, such as terrorist groups, operate.

But it also carries risks for the perpetrator nations, because of the chilling effect on trade, business and even informal and cultural ties.

The James Foley Foundation was set up by the family of Foley, a journalist murdered by the Islamic State in Syria in 2014. to advocate for the release of American citizens and lawful permanent residents unfairly arrested or taken hostage abroad. It lists 46 of them in 16 countries, nearly 80 percent held by foreign governments.

The group’s 2024 report noted a sharp uptick in Russian arrests of Americans since 2022, with nine U.S. nationals detained in Russia on average per year, four times the average of the previous 14 years, underscoring Putin’s growing appetite for the practice and the worsening relationship between Moscow and the United States.

In all, 437 U.S. nationals were held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad from Jan. 1, 2001, to May 31, 2024, the foundation reported. It found that nimble, patient and creative diplomatic efforts secure the freedom of detainees and hostages, but it also called on the United States and its allies to put more resources into the effort.

“The U.S. government must do more to hold accountable countries or individuals responsible for kidnapping or wrongfully detaining U.S. nationals,” it wrote. “Granting impunity in such cases undermines justice, encourages future wrongful detentions and hostage-taking, and jeopardizes the safety and security of U.S. nationals abroad.”

Prisoners who have fame on their side or powerful support groups to engage in advocacy and pressure, such as Griner, Gershkovich and Kurmasheva, appear to have better chances of release than prisoners such as Fogel, the American schoolteacher, who lacks the same clout.

Griner and Fogel each pleaded guilty to smuggling cannabis, said they needed it for medical use and were sentenced to hefty terms - 9.5 years and 14 years respectively. After a massive support campaign in the United States, Griner was freed within months of her sentencing. But Fogel, who was arrested six months earlier, has been passed over in three successive prisoner exchanges.

Unlike Griner, the State Department has not designated Fogel to have been “wrongfully detained” by Russia, a status which means that U.S. officials prioritize the case. Kurmasheva, who was released, also had not been designated as wrongfully detained.

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Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia contributed to this report.