Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's most prominent critic, could have been released as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War, The Wall Street Journal reveals in an extensive investigation, reports News.bg.
The deal, prepared in complete secrecy for months, was supposed to include the release of two Americans, former Marine Paul Whelan and WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich, in exchange for the convicted Russian agent Vadim Krasikov in Germany and other individuals held in Western prisons.
According to the investigation, in November 2023, the US special envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Kirsten, in violation of instructions from the White home, met in Tel Aviv with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, considered a “wizard of backstage diplomacy“ and one of the few people with access to Vladimir Putin. Kirsten presented an idea that he himself called “expanding the problem“: Germany releases Krasikov (who killed a Chechen commander of Georgian origin in Berlin) if Russia releases Navalny, and in parallel the US and its allies return Russian spies in exchange for Whelan and Gershkovich.
Initially Abramovich doubted that Putin would release Navalny, but days later he delivered a surprising message that the Russian president was ready to discuss the deal.
At the end of November 2023, Navalny was transferred to the “Polar Wolf“ penal colony behind the Arctic Circle. In January and February 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden held a series of discreet contacts. On February 9, Scholz arrived in Washington, D.C., without the knowledge of his cabinet, for a private meeting with Biden, at which he agreed to release Krasikov in order to save Navalny.
Days later, during the Munich Security Conference, key figures in the negotiations arrived in the city, including Bulgarian investigative journalist Hristo Grozev. Together with Maria Pevchikh, a long-time associate of the oppositionist, they closely monitored the latest diplomatic maneuvers.
“What if they kill him?“, Pevchikh asks the evening before the decisive meetings. Grozev assures her that such a thing is impossible under the exchange protocols established since the Cold War.
On February 16, 2024, as the heads of the FBI, MI6, and Germany’s BND were having lunch together, their phones began to ring: Russian state media reported that Navalny had died in the Arctic colony. The news shocked the delegates in Munich. Grozev took Yulia Navalny, the opposition leader’s wife, to the apartment of U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. There, with tears and anger, she declared: “Putin and his people will pay for what they did. And I have one demand: do not release Krasikov.”
Navalny’s death derailed months of diplomatic work and called into question the entire design of the multilateral exchange.
Despite the tragedy, the negotiations continued with a changed focus. In the following months, the CIA and European agencies met with Russian officials at secret locations, including Saudi Arabia. On August 1, 2024, at an airport in Turkey, the largest prisoner exchange in modern history took place. 24 people and two children changed sides, including Whelan, Gershkovich, Russian dissidents, and Krasikov.
Analysts have commented that this case definitively establishes a new “transactional era“ in international relations, in which the detention and exchange of prisoners becomes an instrument of state policy.