In a historic prisoner swap, hundreds of U.S. and Russian nationals detained behind bars for years were released in a deal brokered through secret negotiations between Washington and Moscow. The emotional reunion saw individuals from both countries pass each other on airport tarmacs or, like in the Cold War, the symbolic Glienicke Bridge, as they are freed. The released prisoners included spies, journalists, drug traffickers, arms dealers and even a well-known athlete.
Thursday’s historic exchange was especially complex, involving months of talks among several countries before planes flew the many prisoners to freedom. The December 9, 2022, exchange of the WNBA star for a Russian arms trader nicknamed the “merchant of death” was notable and controversial due to the significant disparities.
A look back at previous swaps:
Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout
According to an Associated Press (AP) report, Griner was arrested 10 months earlier upon arrival at a Moscow airport when vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. She was convicted of drug charges and sentenced to nine years in prison, a harsh sentence even in low-tolerance Russia.
Bout was arrested in 2008 in a U.S. sting operation in Thailand for offering to sell surface-to-air missiles to men posing as Colombian rebels. He was eventually extradited to the United States, convicted of charges including conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, and sentenced to 25 years.
Griner’s celebrity status made her case highly visible, and the Biden administration worked intensively to secure her release, which occurred at an airport in Abu Dhabi. Critics said Washington had given in to political pressure by swapping an arms dealer for a famous athlete.
Trevor Reed and Konstantin Yaroshenko
The exchange of Reed and Yaroshenko was notable because it occurred amid soaring tensions only two months after Russia started its full-scale war in Ukraine.
Reed, a former Marine, and Yaroshenko, a pilot, were both involved in separate legal issues. Reed was arrested in Moscow in 2019 for allegedly assaulting a police officer while intoxicated, and despite the US Ambassador calling the case “preposterous” and even the judge laughing, he was sentenced to nine years. Yaroshenko, on the other hand, was arrested in Liberia in 2010 for involvement in a cocaine distribution scheme and was extradited to the US, where he received a 20-year sentence, AP reported.
(Image: Moscow News Agency/AP)
The sleepers
In June 2010, US officials arrested 10 Russian “sleeper agents” who had been living in the US under false identities, awaiting activation for espionage missions. While most of the intelligence they gathered was deemed low-level, one notable exception was Anna Chapman, who gained tabloid attention due to her striking features and red hair.
Rudolf Abel and Francis Gary Powers
On February 10, 1962, a dramatic Cold War prisoners swap took place on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, where American U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers and Soviet spy Vilyam Fisher, also known as Rudolf Abel, were exchanged. Powers had been shot down over Russia in 1960 while on a high-altitude photo reconnaissance mission, and was captured with a self-destructive coin coated with neurotoxin. Abel, a British-born Soviet spy who had been arrested in the US in 1957 and sentenced to 30 years, was released to the Soviet Union in exchange for Powers. The event was later dramatized in the 2015 film “Bridge of Spies”, according to AP.
