Filenews 6 August 2024 - by Marc Champion
Take a good look at the list of prisoners exchanged between the Kremlin and the White House last week. If, after that, you still admire Russian President Vladimir Putin for his strength and despise U.S. alliances for their "weak" liberalism, you need help.
Putin went in person to Moscow's Vnukovo airport to hug Vadim Krashikov as he stepped off the plane that brought him home. He is the "patriot" Putin has sought to release since he was convicted and jailed in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Georgian citizen who had fought against Russian forces in Chechnya more than 20 years ago.
Among those released were also people convicted by independent courts of cybercrimes, confidential dealings and sanctions violation.
What happens to the other side of the exchange? Biden also went to the airport in person to greet three Americans released from Russian prisons, including Evan Gerskovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter convicted of espionage. Alsou Kurmasheva, editor of Prague-based Radio Liberty-Radio Free Europe, had been jailed while visiting Russia for allegedly spreading fake news. Paul Whelan, who left the Marines in 2008 on a misconduct acquittal after being convicted of multiple charges "related to theft," was convicted of espionage by a Russian court in 2018. Both Whelan and the U.S. government have denied the accusation.
Green card holder and U.S. resident Vladimir Kara-Murza was also on the original plane from Moscow to Turkey. He had become Putin's most prominent political opponent since the death of Alexei Navalny in pre-trial detention earlier this year.
It is obvious that we do not expect governments to admit their spies publicly. But the Russian judicial system clearly decides such cases with the guidance of the Kremlin and not on the basis of evidence, which there is no need to give weight to its decisions. These people were hostages, imprisoned by Putin to exchange them for a murderer, criminals and real spies.
In a sense, all this is ordinary. In 2022, American basketball star Brittney Griner was traded for a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. Her "crime" was to pass through Russian customs bringing medically prescribed vape cartridges with cannabis oil. But what makes the latest exchange extraordinary is that it required the cooperation of many countries and involved eight Russian dissidents with no connection to any of them.
According to Kristo Grozev, an investigative journalist who had been lobbying for this deal to exchange "killers for innocents" since 2021, the original idea was for Germany to hand over Krashikov in exchange for Navalny. The latter had been hospitalized in Germany after being poisoned in Russia with the nerve agent Novichok. When Navalny later died in an Arctic prison, it was Germany that insisted on the release of many Russian dissidents in exchange for the freedom of a murderer.
As Biden has pointed out, this was obviously not in Germany's interest, as it did not take back any Germans. Slovenia did not take back Slovenians either. They did so for the benefit of their U.S. ally and a group of highly selfless Russians. Among the eight dissidents were other opponents of Putin, as well as civil rights activists such as Oleg Orlov, co-chair of the Nobel Prize-winning organization Memorial, which for 30 years exposed cases of domestic repression.
Certainly, this exchange was a political victory for Biden. Clearly it was also a victory for former KGB officer Putin, who once again proved to his secret operations agents and spies that they can carry out future missions abroad with the confidence that they will not be left to rot in prison if caught. I cannot imagine a clearer example of the difference, and importance, of the people and values that each side prioritises, nor of the value of alliances.
Democracies have physical espionage networks, killing people and doing bad things. There are no innocents among states. But unlike Putin's Russia, that doesn't define them. Living under the rule of law – however imperfect – is a fundamentally different experience than living without it. Similarly, alliances can be disappointing at times, but their value is not defined by this frustration, nor solely by what they spend on defense, however important it may be.
It's tempting to admire strongmen like Putin, or even would-be strongmen like Donald Trump. They have greater freedom of action, they do not have to obey the laws and they do not have to compromise. They seem more capable of accomplishing certain things, even though Trump's claim that he could have struck a better deal sounds ridiculous.
What matters is that we recognize what is actually being done by these leaders: arbitrary legislation, internal repression, hostage-taking, and the security of murderers versus individual rights. There is really nothing to admire here, nor to wish for.
Performance – Editing: Stathis Ketitzian
