EIGHT Russian prisoners were released in the historic swap involving six countries that saw American journalist Evan Gershkovich finally go home.
Among them were a “sleeper cell” Russian spy couple with two young oblivious children, a convicted hitman and several high profile cyber criminals.
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Evan Gershkovich was one of 16 political prisoners to be freed in exchange after the months of crunch negotiations and top-secret diplomatic talks.
Vladimir Putin’s twisted regime used those jailed on trumped up charges as bargaining chips to see his own Russian citizens released.
He later greeted them all as they landed in Russia late on Thursday night
A total of 24 prisoners were involved in the secret, large scale operation which required cooperation from the highest levels of government in the US, Russia and Germany.
READ MORE ON PRISONER SWAP
White House officials, diplomats and CIA agents scoured the Middle East searching for “friendly governments” who would consider releasing their Russian spies in exchange for the Western prisoners set free.
But it came at a cost, with dangerous Russian criminals and spies now set free in the world after some years spent behind bars.
SPY COUPLE NEXT DOOR
Two of the eight were undercover Russian agents posing as Argentinian immigrants living in Slovenia, with their children attending an international British School.
Maria Rosa Mayer Muños ran an online art gallery and her husband Ludwig Gisch ran an IT startup.
Their real names were Anna and Artem Dultsev, they were Russian SVR spies, and they kept hundreds of thousands of euros hidden away inside their fridge.
Neighbours of the couple, who lived with their two kids in Črnuče, described them as “normal” and “quiet, the Wall Street Journal reports.
They spoke English and German with friends, and perfect Spanish with their son and daughter.
The kids, Daniel, 8, and Sofia, 11, grew up thinking they were Argentine – not Russian.
They only found out about their parents true identity after boarding the plane that would take their parents to Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday.
Putin greeted Anna and Sofia with huge bouquets of flowers and hugged the spy mum as she cried.
He said “buenos noches” to the children, his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later admitted, as they could not speak any Russian.
Peskov said: “The children of the illegal spies who flew in yesterday only found out that they were Russian when the plane took off from Ankara.
“Before that, they didn’t know that they were Russian and that they had anything to do with our country.
“And, in fact, you probably saw when the children came down the plane, they don’t speak Russian. In fact, Putin greeted them in Spanish.
“He said ‘buenas noches’.”
Hiding the children’s real identity from them was likely part of the deep cover which the couple led as Russian sleeper agents.
Their computers were built with tech to speak to handlers in Moscow and exchange information gathered from Europe – tech that was unbreakable when Slovenian and US officials tried to break through.
The couple were arrested in Slovenian capital Ljubljana in 2022.
They had allegedly used the city as a base since 2017, travelling around Europe to pass on Russian orders to other spies.
It was later claimed they had trained their children to know what to do if they were ever captured.
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HITMAN VADIM KRASIKOV
Convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of a Chechen rebel leader in Berlin, acted as the linchpin for the historic deal.
The 58-year-old was convicted of murder and state terrorism by a German court in 2021.
His victim was Tornike Khangoshvili, assassinated in August 2019 for his role fighting alongside Chechen separatists against Moscow in the 2000s.
Krasikov, who witnesses said had a dark wig, cycled up behind him and shot him dead – before changing clothes, shaving off his beard and dumping his bike in a pond to evade arrest.
The judge said that the order for Khangoshvili’s death very likely came from Vladimir Putin himself.
Krasikov was sentenced to life imprisonment for an “especially serious” crime.
Russia made it clear no deal was possible without his release, a decision that rested in German hands.
After the exchange in Turkey, the Kremlin confirmed that Krasikov is a serving officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB).
It also suggested he worked as one of President Vladimir Putin’s personal bodyguards.
Putin’s spokesperson and lapdog Dmitry Peskov said: “Krasikov is an FSB employee.
He said Krasikov had “served with some of the people working in the president’s security detail”.
HACKER VLADISLAV KLYUSHIN
Klyushin, 43, was given a nine-year sentence in 2023 after making some £26 million in a hacking scheme.
The plot relied on stealing secret earnings information and using insider data to make trades on Wall Street.
He was arrested when his private jet landed in the Swiss Alps in 2021.
The Russian businessman was then extradited to the US on fraud charges.
His company, Moscow-based cybersecurity firm M13, provided services to the Kremlin.
CYBER CRIMINAL ROMAN SELEZNEV
Seleznev, 40, is an infamous cyber criminal.
He stole millions of credit card numbers from hundreds of private companies and sold the information online.
The US hit him with their longest ever sentence for cyber crime in 2017 – 27 years.
Meaning he’s now left prison several decades before the end of his sentence.
Extradited from the Maldives in 2014, Seleznev is linked to the Russian elite via his dad, who worked as a politician.
WEAPONS SMUGGLER VADIM KONOSHCHENOK
Konoshchenok, a suspected FSB agent, was extradited from Estonia to the US in 2023.
He was dubbed a “critical participant” in a Russian intelligence scheme to gather top secret info on American tech and weaponry.
The Russian was also accused of smuggling ammunition and military tech to help Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine.
American prosecutors said he was first detained in 2022 while trying to travel from Estonia to Russia with some such tech.
‘JOURNALIST’ SPY PAVEL RUBTSOV
Rubtsov, 42, was one of several people held in Poland on charges of spying for Russia since the Ukraine war broke out in 2022.
He lived under the name Pablo Gonzalez and used his dual Spanish-Russian nationality to go undetected.
Rubtsov worked as a journalist as part of his cover identity.
SCIENTIST SPY MIKHAIL MIKUSHIN
Mikushin, 45, is a former scientist who doubled up as a Russian spy.
He was arrested in 2022 in Norway and charged with espionage against the Nordic country.
He was posing as a Brazilian researcher called José Assis Giammaria.
In 2021, Mikushin went to Norway as a visiting researcher for the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic studies at Tromso university.
He ironically worked on fields including social security and hybrid threats.
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Who were the 16 prisoners freed from Russia?
ON AUGUST 1 2024, 16 people were freed from Russian imprisonment as part of a historic prisoner swap deal with the West.
They were:
- Evan Gershkovich, Russian-American journalist
- Paul Whelan, former US Marine
- Alsu Kurmasheva, Russian-American journalist
- Vladimir Kara-Murza, Russian-British journalist and politician
- Ilya Yashin, Russian opposition politician
- Oleg Orlov, Russian human rights activist
- Lilia Chanysheva, Russian activist and colleague of opposition leader Alexei Navalny
- Ksenia Fadeyeva, Russian activist and colleague of opposition leader Alexei Navalny
- Sasha Skochilenko, anti-war activist and artist
- Kevin Lik, German-Russian teen convicted of treason
- Rico Krieger, German citizen
- Andrei Pivovarov, Russian opposition activist
- Dieter Voronin, Russian-German journalist
- Patrick Schoebel, German found with cannabis sweets
- Herman Moyzhes, Russian-German immigration lawyer
- Vadim Ostanin, colleague of opposition leader Alexei Navalny
