Biden’s leadership announced a prisoner swap with Russia to secure the release of three U. S. citizens, adding Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Navy veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsou Kurmasheva, in a complex 24-person swap.
Whelan and Gershkovich were sentenced to lengthy criminal sentences in Russia for espionage fees that their families and the United States government routinely ignored as unfounded. Kurmasheva, who holds dual U. S. and Russian citizenship, was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. Her spouse told CBS News that he believes she was arrested for a book containing stories of others who oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in which she appeared as an editor.
The highest-profile Russian national released in a multinational and highly complex prisoner exchange is a convicted Russian murderer who has spent the past few years serving a life sentence in Germany.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had hinted for months that he was willing to release American criminals in exchange for Vadim Krasikov, sentenced to life in prison for a brazen murder in Berlin in 2019 that German judges called murder at the request of the Russian government. Array Krasikov reportedly worked for Russia’s domestic spy service, the FSB.
Krasikov was convicted in 2021 of the murder of a Georgian citizen of Chechen origin in Berlin, Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a Chechen insurgent involved in the long war against Russian forces in Chechnya.
The judges condemned the murder of Krasikov Khangoshvili as an act of Russian “state terrorism,” and the incident sparked a diplomatic row between Moscow and Berlin.
Krasikov’s call came about two years ago, when a U. S. official told CBS News that Moscow had sought a deal to hire him for Whelan, the U. S. Navy veteran who at the time was the most prominent American imprisoned in Russia. Negotiations on this exchange in the summer of 2022 failed without reaching an agreement. CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang said Moscow asked for a swap of “spy for spy,” Whelan for Krasikov, but Berlin rejected the proposal.
After returning to Russia, where he personally received Putin at the airport, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov proved that Krasikov was an official of the Federal Security Service (FSB), a fact that had already been reported in the West, including in Moscow. tangle.
It’s unclear exactly what replaced the Germans’ calculus to make the exchange possible, however, the official Belarusian news firm BeITA said President Alexander Lukashenko, a close best friend of Putin’s from Russia, had to pardon a German sentenced to death in the country for terrorism. and other positions.
The AFP news agency reported Thursday that the German Foreign Ministry had indicated in an email that Rico Krieger had been pardoned in Belarus, and a spokesperson said “the news is a relief. “
In an interview broadcast last week on Belarusian state television, Krieger, speaking as a prisoner and most likely under duress, said he was asked by Ukrainian SBU intelligence to photograph military installations in Belarus in October and to try to detonate explosives at a exercise line at countcheck out. An explosion occurred on a railway track southwest of Minsk, the Belarusian capital, but there were no injuries.
He expressed remorse for his alleged moves during the interview and said he hoped Lukashenko would forgive him.
Other Russian nationals were also released through other countries as part of the transfer deal, including a husband and wife who were convicted in Slovenia last week on espionage charges.
Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested in 2022 and pleaded guilty to espionage charges before a court in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, on Wednesday. Both men were sentenced to 19 months in prison, released after serving their sentences and ordered to leave the country.
The two men had posed as Argentine citizens to move to Slovenia in 2017, false identities under which Artem had set up an IT company and Anna ran an online art gallery.
Local media said the pair used Slovenia as a base from which they traveled to neighboring NATO countries and the European Union to deliver orders and to their senior colleagues in Moscow.
They were sent back to Russia with their two children.
After arriving in Moscow, Peskov proved that the couple were undercover intelligence agents, known as “illegals,” and that their children did not know they were Russian.
Norwegian security forces charged a man who was running as a university professor of espionage activities in late 2022, claiming to have discovered the true identity of Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin. Mikushin, an elderly man in his 40s, posed as a Brazilian academic, but the government said he was a Russian spy.
CBS News partner BBC News reported in October 2022 that Norwegian media had quoted security service spokesman Thomas Blom as saying that Mikushin, who had used José Assis Giammaria’s fake call to get his position as a professor at a Norwegian university, had been accused of gathering intelligence similar to state secrets.
The BBC quoted Christo Grozev of the investigative journalism organization Bellingcat as having ties to the Russian army intelligence agency GRU.
Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, also known by his Spanish name Pablo González, had been working for years as a freelance journalist, working for American and European media outlets, when he came to the attention of the government while traveling in the eastern part of the country. Ukraine with a photographer. He asked to report to the government in kyiv in February 2022, shortly before Russia introduced its full-scale invasion of the country.
In February this year, the International Federation of Journalists considered him the only journalist imprisoned in the European Union and, together with the organization Reporters Without Borders, called for his release and accused the Polish government of not having presented any evidence against him.
A month after his arrest, Voice of America asked Poland’s Internal Security Agency about Rubtsov’s detention and was informed in a statement that he had been known as a GRU agent.
“He developed activities for Russia taking advantage of his prestige as a journalist. As a result, he was able to move freely in Europe and around the world, adding spaces affected by armed conflicts and spaces of political tension,” the firm was quoted as saying through VOA. He added that he had accumulated data that, if used through Russia, “could have a direct negative effect on the internal and external security and defence of our country”.
Roman Seleznev is the son of a Russian parliamentarian who was sentenced by a US court in December 2017 to 27 years in prison for cyber fraud.
A federal jury convicted Seleznev last year of hacking into U. S. business networks to obtain credit card information, as well as directing a cybertheft scheme overseas. He found he was guilty of 38 counts, adding hacking and wire fraud. Authorities said their target was restaurants and other businesses in Washington state, using borrowed credit card numbers to resell them on web forums. Prosecutors said his movements resulted in approximately $170 million in credit card losses worldwide, making him “one of the most prolific credit card traffickers in history. “
Russian billionaire Vladislav Klyushin, linked to the Kremlin, was convicted last year of participating in an insider trading scheme valued at $90 million to obtain secret corporate profits that includes Microsoft data stolen from computer networks in the United States.
According to the Associated Press, Klushin ran a generation company based in Moscow with ties to the Russian government.
“For approximately three years, he and his co-conspirators continuously hacked into United States’ computer networks to make tomorrow’s headlines today,” Massachusetts U. S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement following his sentencing in February 2023.
U. S. prosecutors announced 2022 charges against seven individuals, adding Russian national Vadim Konoshchenok, accusing them of a coordinated effort to bypass U. S. exports to smuggle military-grade manufactured apparatus into Russia in the United States.
According to the indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York, from 2017 until at least spring 2022, Konoshchenok, Yevgeniy Grinin, Aleksey Ippolitov, Boris Livshits, Svetlana Skvortsova, Vadim Yermolenko and Alexey Brayman used shell companies, fake addresses and forgeries. . shipping labels for shipping devices to Russia.
They were accused of smuggling parts, adding “advanced electronic devices and complicated testing equipment” for use in the development of nuclear weapons and other military and space applications. Investigators said the pieces were repackaged and shipped from various “intermediate locations” after arriving in Europe. and Asia, before despite the fact that everything was sent to Russia.
Prosecutors said that in October 2022, Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence officer, was arrested by Estonian police on the country’s border with Russia, allegedly in possession of 35 types of semi-trailers, thousands of 6. 5mm bullets Made in Nebraska. and precision rifle ammunition.
CBS News’ Robert Legare contributed to this report.