OPINION: Questions on the East-West Prisoner Exchange

This week's surprise exchange of very different categories of prisoners between Russia and the West continues to raise significant questions, despite all the positives.

These include: How and on what terms was this agreement reached? Why was the circle of those freed from the modern Russian and Belarusian gulags so selective or narrow? What could this exchange mean? And what have we learned from the first statements of the leading liberated Russian liberals?

Kyiv Post has already tried to reflect the different initial reactions and indicate the possible implications.

So, here is an early attempt to take stock and offer my own reflections on this, which is still a hot topic.

At the outset, I want to emphasize that I believe that the freeing of any prisoners of conscience, as Amnesty International used to call them in its golden heydays in the 1960s through ‘80s, is, in essence, anyone imprisoned or persecuted for their non-extreme views and beliefs, should be welcome and aimed for.

But, of course, the question arises of “on what terms” – in exchange for assassins, spies, saboteurs, agents-provocateurs, thieves or other types of criminals?   Does not the moral equivalency implied play into the hands of cynical despots and crude megalomaniacs who do not abide by the norms of civilized rules-based behavior?

I recall as a young man in London, connected with Amnesty International, witnessing the exchange during the Cold War in December 1976 of the Russian political prisoner Vladimir Bukovsky in exchange for the Chilean communist leader Luis Corvalan. The Soviets sought to minimize the importance of this courageous dissident and coined the expression: “They exchanged a hooligan for Luis Corvalan…”

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I had the good fortune of meeting Bukovsky almost immediately. The following month, this Russian democrat and patriot, opposed to Russian imperialism, signed a letter with me and several others to The Times, drawing attention to the plight of Ukrainian political prisoners and the cause they were defending.

In April 1979, a larger exchange of prisoners took place.  Five Soviet prisoners of conscience, including the Ukrainian Valenty Moroz, were exchanged for two former United Nations employees convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

And in December 1986, the Russian Jewish dissident Nathan Sharansky, who incidentally was from Donetsk, became the first political prisoner released by the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He was included in a prisoner swap comprising three low-level Western and several Soviet, Czech and Polish spies held in the US and West Germany. A campaigner for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, he opposed the force-feeding of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

I’ve given these examples to stress the difference between the types that Putin’s Russia was ready to exchange in return for foreigners it had taken hostage on its territory or dissenting liberals.  They included a KGB assassin who had murdered a Chechen émigré leader in Germany. What does it tell us about the nature of today’s Russia and its leader who is prepared to openly welcome home a killer agent as a hero?

And what have we learned about the state of the Russian liberal opposition from the first statements of its freed representatives?  No, they have not been as forthright as Bukovsky was back almost half a century ago and delivered clear indications that would inspire belief that the domestic opposition to Putin, his rapacious war against Ukraine and crusade against the West is growing and can be relied on. 

Let me quote the reaction of the German specialist on Russia and Ukraine Andreas Umland after he watched the press conference given by three of the Russian liberals soon after being freed in the swap.

Umland notes on X (formerly Twitter):

 A bizarre press conference in Bonn

• Russia's war as a secondary topic
• odd call for fewer Western sanctions
• claim ordinary Russians are anti-war
• positive reference to Solzhenitsyn [he adds: the positive reference made by Vladimir Kara-Murza was ‘inept. Solzhenitsyn's pan-Russianism & antiliberalism are feeding the war. His meetings with Putin legitimized & rehabilitated the former KGB officer.’”

Umland’s conclusion, which I share: “The press conference was unhelpful & alienated Ukrainians… A wasted Russian chance to create a common anti-Putin front with the Ukrainians.”

The position being expressed by the newly released Russian liberals unfortunately reflects the wishy-washiness in the stance adopted by the widow of Russian oppositionist Alexi Navalny, who died in a Russian prison in February of this year, Yulia.  She and her followers continue to promote the line that this is not Russia’s war against Ukraine, but Putin’s.

Sympathy for her as a widow of a leading Russian oppositionist or for the newly freed Russian dissenters should not clear them of the responsibility to tell the world where they and those they represent stand. Are they with the democratic world fully, or is Russia still some sort of historic special case deserving to be treated differently? Is Putin’s Russia a continuation of despotic Russian imperialism in an adapted form or an aberration from the norm?

Unfortunately, the US stance in all of this has to be questioned. Of course, one appreciates the desire to free imprisoned US hostages, which, fortunately, was achieved. But what about the approach to deciding who else should be included in the target group to be released in exchange for those Russia wanted to be returned? And what was the initial reaction in the White House to the news that the swap had occurred?

Achieving the deal meant involving several countries: Belarus, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Spain, and Turkey as fixers.  So why focus only on Russian political prisoners?  Could not White House security advisor Jake Sullivan and his colleagues who were negotiating the deal not ensured that at least one or two leading Belarusian oppositionists – say the husband of Belarusian democratic opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, or her political ally Maria Kolesnikova, been included?  Or that Turkey ensures that at least one prominent Crimean Tatar political prisoner also be included.  I’m not even going to mention Ukrainian prisoners.

And let’s go a step further. Who advised Harris to call Navalnaya to congratulate her on the successful swap? Why her? Do Sullivan, Harris, and the White House consider her to be the best hope for a reformed, non-imperialist, peaceful Russia? If so, why? If this is the case, Ukrainians and many Eastern and Central Europeans will hesitate and suspect that they will be sold out in future behind-the-scenes deals. 

So, caveat emptor – buyer beware.  Ukrainians remember the words of the writer Volodymyr Vynnychenko, who was prime minister in the short-lived independent Ukrainian state in 1918-19, that Russian liberalism ends where Ukraine begins. They still need to be proved wrong.