In a Secret Game of Prisoner Swaps, Putin Has Held Most of the Cards
There were no aides and no note-takers in the Oval Office—just President Biden and his German guest. Chancellor Olaf Scholz came on such short notice that the only plane he could book, a small Airbus 321, had to refuel in Iceland. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the fighting in Gaza dominated the 90-minute meeting.
There was one last secret item on the agenda: Were Germany and America willing to conduct one of the most complex prisoner trades with the Kremlin since the Cold War? Washington wanted Vladimir Putin to send home two Americans it deemed unlawfully jailed in Russia, former Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who will mark a year in captivity on Friday. Putin wanted Berlin to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hit man serving a life sentence in Germany for murder. It would be a tough thing for the U.S.
ally to deliver, but perhaps it could be sold to the German public if Russia agreed to free its most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in an Arctic gulag. Both administrations agreed to explore the idea further. The White House never had a chance to make a formal proposal to Moscow.
Word of the discussions reached the Kremlin via a private intermediary, according to people familiar with the matter. On Feb. 16, one week after the Oval Office meeting, Navalny died suddenly of unknown causes.
“Such is life," the Russian president told reporters the night after his re-election. It was the most shocking of a series of setbacks in secret prisoner talks between Washington and Moscow that have now bedeviled two U.S. presidencies.
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