Who Was Released in the U.S.-Russia Prisoner Swap?

Sixteen people were released from Russian custody on Thursday in the largest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War. Three American citizens, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, were freed as part of a deal, along with several prominent dissidents released to Germany. In exchange, eight people were released by the West. 

The deal was the result of a delicate negotiation involving several countries—including the U.S., Russia, Germany, and others. “For anyone who questions whether allies matter—they do,” President Joe Biden said Thursday. “Today is a powerful example of why it's vital to have friends in this world, friends you can trust, work with and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this.”

Read More: ‘Their Brutal Ordeal Is Over.’ Biden Announces Release of Americans in Russia Prisoner Swap

Here is a list of all 24 people released in the historic U.S.-Russia prisoner swap.

Released by Russia

Evan Gershkovich

Evan Gershkovich, 32, is a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in March 2023, falsely accused of gathering intelligence for the CIA while on assignment in Yekaterinburg. He has been a political prisoner in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison for nearly a year, the first American journalist to be accused of espionage in Russia since the Cold War.

Read More: The Fight to Free Evan Gershkovich

Paul Whelan

Paul Whelan, 52,  is a former U.S. Marine who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and is the longest-held American prisoner to be released, according to the Wall Street Journal. He was detained on espionage charges, which he has firmly denied, while visiting Russia for a friend’s wedding. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020, and has been serving his sentence in a remote prison camp in Mordovia. 

Alsu Kurmasheva

Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, is a Russian-American journalist and editor at the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. She was detained by authorities in June 2023 as she was visiting relatives in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. In October, she was hit with charges of being an undeclared foreign agent. Then, in December, Kurmasheva—who is married with two daughters— was hit with additional charges of spreading false information about the Russian army.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, and filMMAker.  Kara-Murza, 36, who divides his time between Washington and Moscow and holds a U.S. green card, is the vice chairman of the Open Russia movement and the chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, established in honor of his mentor, the major dissident political leader in Russia who was assassinated in 2015.

Kara-Murza was a pallbearer for former Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, and was arrested for speaking out against Russia’s war with Ukraine and charged with treason.

Ilya Yashin

Russian dissident Ilya Yashin is a prominent Kremlin critic who has been vocal about his opposition to the Russia-Ukraine war. He was arrested in June 2022 and sentenced to an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence after he was convicted of spreading false information about Russian soldiers. 

Oleg Orlov

Russian human rights defender Oleg Orlov was sentenced this year to two and a half years in prison after he was charged with “discrediting the Russian Armed Forces.” At the end of his trial in February, he claimed that the case against him was politically motivated, saying, “I don’t regret anything and I don’t repent anything.”

Rico Krieger

German national and former Red Cross employee Rico Krieger was sentenced to death in Belarus after being accused of placing explosives on a rail track. He was pardoned by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko on Tuesday. 

Kevin Lik 

Kevin Lik, 19, was born in Germany and moved to Russia when he was 12. Lik is one of the youngest people to ever be convicted of treason in Russia. In December 2023, Lik was sentenced to four years in prison.

Dieter Voronin

Political scientist and Russian-German national Dieter Voronin was convicted of high treason and given a 13 year and three month sentence in March 2023. He was arrested in 2021 in connection to a treason case against journalist Ivan Safronov, who, according to the New York Times, was accused of state treason for passing classified information to foreign nationals and sentenced to 22 years in prison. 

Herman Moyzhes 

Herman Moyzhes, a Russian-German lawyer, was charged with treason last month for allegedly helping Russians obtain residence permits in Europe, according to Russian news agency Tass.

Patrick Schöbel

A German citizen, Patrick Schöbel was arrested in February at Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg over possession of cannabis gummies and accusations of smuggling drugs, according to The Associated Press. He was charged with drug smuggling, which carries a charge of up to seven years. 

His arrest, which drew parallels with that of WNBA star Brittney Griner, was criticized by many as a strategic act to ensure the release of Russians imprisoned abroad.  

Alexandra Skochilenko

Anti-war activist Alexandra Skochilenko is a Russian artist and musician who was charged with seven years in prison in November 2023 for replacing price tags with anti-war messages in a St. Petersburg market. 

One message read, "The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 people were hiding from shelling.” Another said: “Weekly iNFLation reached a new high not seen since 1998 because of our Military actions in Ukraine. Stop the war.” She was arrested in April 2022. 

Ksenia Fadeeva

Ksenia Fadeeva was the head of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation in Tomsk and an elected city councilor. In December, after The Anti-Corruption Foundation was designated by a Russian court as an extremist group, she received a nine-year sentence on extremism charges. 

Read More: ‘Putin Is My Enemy.’ The Revolution of Yulia Navalnaya

Lilia Chanysheva

Lilia Chanysheva, a former regional coordinator for The Anti-Corruption Foundation, was arrested in November 2021 after the foundation was branded as an extremist organization. She was convicted of creating an extremist community and inciting extremism in June 2023, and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Her sentence was later extended by two years after it was deemed too lenient by the regional Supreme Court. Navalny testified at her trial ten months before his death in February, according to Radio Free Europe. 

Vadim Ostanin

Vadim Ostanin, also head of an Anti-Corruption Foundation branch, was arrested in December 2021 and later convicted on extremist charges. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2023 on charges related to his work with the Anti-Corruption Foundation. 

Andrei Pivovarov

Andrei Pivovarov, Russian opposition activist and human rights defender, was the former head of the now defunct, pro-democracy Open Russia movement. He was taken off a plane bound for Warsaw shortly before take off in May 2021. He was  charged with running an “undesirable organization” and sentenced to four years in a penal colony in July 2022. 

Open Russia disbanded in 2021 to protect its members from criminal prosecution. 

Released by other countries

Vadim Krasikov

Vadim Krasikov is a Russian national who was convicted in Germany of “state-sponsored murder” after killing former Chechen militant Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen, in a central Berlin park in 2019. He was sentenced to life in prison in Germany in 2021, straining diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia. 

Krasikov, 58,  has been a key name for the Kremlin for years when discussing the potential for prisoner swaps.

Vadim Konoshchenok

Vadim Konoschenok was extradited from Estonia to the United States in July 2023 for allegedly providing American-made electronics and ammunition to the Russian Military, breaching international sanctions. Konoschenok, 48, was “a critical participant in a scheme to provide sensitive, American-made electronics and ammunition in furtherance of Russia’s war efforts and weapons development,” according  to Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Vladislav Klyushin

Vladislav Klyushin, 43, is a wealthy Russian entrepreneur. He was sentenced to nine years in federal prison in the U.S. last September over his involvement in an elaborate hack-to-trade scheme that netted approximately $93 million through securities trades based on confidential corporate information stolen from U.S. computer networks.

Roman Seleznev

Roman Seleznev, 40, is a Russian computer hacker, known for his hacker name Track2. In 2017, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison in the United States for “his role in a $50 million cyberfraud ring and for defrauding banks of $9 million through a hacking scheme,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That is the longest sentence for computer crime ever imposed in an American court.

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva are a married couple believed to be a part of the Russian “illegals” system in which spy operatives work on long-term missions posing as foreigners. The couple posed as Argentinians while living in Slovenia. The two pleaded guilty in Slovenia earlier this week to charges of spying and falsifying documents.

Mikhail Mikushin

Mikhail Mikushin entered Norway posing as a Brazilian academic. He used the name José Assis Giammaria and worked at a local university in the Arctic city of Tromso. In October 2022, Mikushin was arrested by Norwegian officials on suspicion of being a Russian spy. In December, Norwegian officials said that Mikushin confirmed his Russian identity.

Pavel Rubtsov

Spanish-Russian journalist Pavel Rubtsov, who also goes by the name Pablo González, was arrested by Polish authorities in 2022 on suspicion that he was spying for Russia. Polish intelligence services allege that he used his journalistic status to gather information for Russia. Rubtsov has denied the charges, according to Voice of America.