Page 40 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine September 2024

40 I Eastern Europe bne September 2024
16 Western prisoners were in a massive swap, but the most important name was not included: Alexey Navalny. He was at the heart of the deal, but was killed in a Russian prison camp in February. / bne IntelliNews
The Russian prisoner swap should have included Navalny
bne IntelliNews
The elite of Russia’s political oppo- sition were released on August
1 in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War, but the most famous political opponent was missing: opposi- tion figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. He was supposed to be part of the deal, The Guardian reports, but died in prison on February 16 in suspicious circumstances.
A plane carried 13 individuals who had been imprisoned in Russia until that morning, including three of Navalny's regional coordinators who were jailed for "extremism." Also part of the swap were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan
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Gershkovich and two other Americans, who were on a separate plane headed back to the United States.
The moment of their disembarkation was one of joy tempered by a profound sense of loss and anger over the absence of Navalny. When negotiations to swap prisoners began several years earlier, Navalny was a key figure in them.
These negotiations began at a meeting in Geneva between Joe Biden, shortly after he became President of the United States, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. During this meeting, Putin sug- gested the establishment of a special
channel for prisoner swaps, a throwback to Cold War practices. Biden agreed, leading to a series of negotiations that eventually resulted in high-profile exchanges, including the release of American basketball player Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2022.
Putin fully focused on the release of FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had mur- dered a Chechen exile in Germany in 2019 and, after being caught in the act, was serving a life sentence in a German jail.
Journalist Christo Grozev, known for exposing Russian spies and assassins,