Three US citizens will be released

The US has confirmed that 24 people are affected prisoner exchange between Russia and other Western countries including the US and Germany.

Among the prisoners released by US citizens Evan Gershkovich – a reporter for the Wall Street Journal – and former US Marine Paul Whelan.

As part of the deal, Russian security pilot Vadim Krasikov was released by Germany.

There had been days of speculation about a major exchange between Russia and the West, which escalated after dozens of prisoners were moved from their cells in Russian prisons to unknown locations.

American journalist Evan Gershkovich he was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security facility earlier this month, after being convicted of espionage.

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first arrested last March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Moscow, by security forces.

Prosecutors accuse him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), allegations Mr Gershkovich, the WSJ and the US government deny.

It was the first conviction of an American journalist for espionage in Russia since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago. After his first arrest he was imprisoned in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison.

Paul Whelan54, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow on espionage charges in 2018.

The ex-US Marine is a citizen of four countries – US, Canada, UK and Ireland. His lawyer said he was detained in a prison in Mordovia region.

After being discharged from the military in 2008 for misconduct, he became a security adviser and began traveling back and forth to Russia on business.

In December 2018, he was arrested by Russia’s FSB, which claimed he was “caught by spies” in Moscow. His family has always denied the charges.

On the same day Mr. Gershkovich was convicted, a Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva he was sentenced to six and a half years in a medium security prison after a secret trial.

He was the editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US government, and was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military.

Her husband Pavel Butorin previously said she was arrested over a book published last year, a collection of stories about Russians opposing the war in Ukraine.

Ms. Kurmasheva holds American and Russian citizenship and lived in Prague with her husband and two daughters. He was arrested in June 2023 while visiting his mother in Russia.

Vladimir Kara-Murza he is a prominent Russian dissident and one of the staunchest opponents of Putin’s regime, and an outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine and the internal crackdown on the opposition in Russia.

In 2023, the 42-year-old was sentenced to 25 years in prison for spreading “false” information about the Russian army and joining “an undesirable organization”.

Mr Kara-Murza – a former journalist and politician – has denied all charges.

The two British and Russian citizens had spent time in a Siberian prison, where his wife claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown from poisoning.

One of Russia’s most prominent dissidents, Ilya Yashin was arrested in 2022 for “spreading false news” about the country’s military.

He was arrested after denouncing alleged Russian crimes in Bucha.

After the death of former opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, Mr Yashin said he feared for his life.

He previously accused President Vladimir Putin of being “mad with power” in a series of letters from the prison west of Smolensk where he was being held.

Oleg Orlov a Russian human rights activist who was jailed in February for calling Russia a fascist state and criticizing the war in Ukraine. He was previously the chairman of the Nobel Prize winning organization Sikhumbuzo.

The 71-year-old man was given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for “repeatedly defying” the Russian military.

In his appeal against his sentence in July, he compared Russia’s justice system to that of Nazi Germany.

His conviction followed a retrial. At the first hearing in October last year, he was fined 150,000 rubles (£1,290; $1,630) and walked out of court. His later conviction marked the intensification of the crackdown on anti-war activists.

Lilia Chanysheva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison earlier this year after being accused of extortion by the authorities.

He previously worked as a local liaison with the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption network.

They were initially sentenced to seven years in 2023, prosecutors objected to this sentence and told officials that it was too lenient. He was recently at a center in the Perm region.

Ms. Chanysheva was the first of Mr. Navalny’s associates to be sentenced for this crime. Most of his other activists have fled to Russia and been deported.

Ksenia Fadeyeva was sentenced to nine years in prison by the authorities after being accused of organizing a dangerous group.

He was a local organizer with Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption organization in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where he was later arrested.

His lawyers argued that he had stopped meeting with the organization before it was designated as an extremist group in 2021.

Many of Mr Navalny’s staff and supporters have been forced to flee Russia into exile in recent years, as the Kremlin has stepped up its crackdown on opposition groups.

Sasha Skochilenko he was sentenced to seven years in the penitentiary for changing supermarket price labels with anti-war messages in November as a form of protest.

The labels being changed draw attention to the deaths of civilians in Mariupol and say that Russia has become a “fascist country”.

The artist from St. Petersburg has been held in a detention center in the city since April 2023.

German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik was convicted of treason at a young age, becoming the youngest person ever to be found guilty.

He grew up in Germany and moved to Russia when he was 12.

Authorities sentenced him to four years in prison last December for emailing photos to “representatives of a foreign country” before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The court said he visited and photographed “deployment sites” of Russian troops.

German national Rico Krieger was accused of planting explosives in Belarus and sentenced to death, before being pardoned by the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko earlier this week.

In a well-edited interview with state-controlled media, he said he was acting on instructions from Ukraine, but no evidence was provided.

He is believed to be the first Westerner to be given the death penalty in Belarus.

Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov led the group Open the Russian basefounded by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years in prison for campaigning for Mr Putin.

He was arrested in 2021 after trying to leave the country from St Petersburg, accused of directing an “unpopular organization”.

Russian-German citizen Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of “treason” after Moscow accused him of obtaining military information from another jailed journalist, Ivan Safronov, AFP reported.

Some German citizens freed by Russia were:

• Patrick Schoebel, who was arrested in St Petersburg earlier this year, after being found in possession of a pack of marijuana.
• Herman Moyzhes, a Russian-German immigration lawyer is facing treason charges after being arrested in May
• Vadim Ostanin, who was the head of one of the regional branches of Alexei Navalny, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023.

One of the high-profile prisoners to be released back to Russia is Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Vadim Krasikov. he is serving a life sentence in Germany with the 2019 killing of an exiled Chechen commander in a Berlin park.

During his trial, prosecutors said he was following orders from Russia, and was part of the FSB’s secret Vympel unit.

His defense lawyers insisted that he is a builder, not a hitman. He denied that he was known as Krasikov, and called himself Vadim Sokolov, which is the name on his passport.

In a recent interview with US talk show host Tucker Carlson, Mr Putin revealed that his country wants the release of his “patriot” Krasikov in exchange for American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Roman Seleznev was He was found guilty of running a robbery scheme in 2017 which caused a loss of $169m (£131m).

US officials say he stole credit card data from restaurants and sold it on the market. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for this scheme that prosecutors say he ran between 2009 and 2013.

According to the Justice Department, Mr. Seleznev used software that enabled him to steal millions of credit card numbers from thousands of businesses.

His father is Valery Seleznev, an MP and ally of Mr Putin.

The US charged Vadim Konoshchenok for conspiracy related to procurement and money laundering on behalf of the Russian government in 2022.

He is thought to have been an FSB agent.

At the time, a statement from the US Department of Justice said that he and others were illegally buying and exporting highly sensitive electronic components, some of which could be used for military purposes.

Husband and wife Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested and convicted of espionage in Slovenia.

They were sentenced to 19 months each. Their two children also returned to Russia.

University lecturer Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin has been charged with collecting intelligence in Norway on behalf of Russia in 2022 while posing as a Brazilian academic.

Norwegian officials said he has a Brazilian passport and has worked as a researcher at the University of Tromso since 2021.

It is said that he went by the name José Assis Giammaria.

Mr Mikushin is believed to have lied about his age, and was actually 44 rather than 37 when he was charged.

Little information is publicly available about other Russians included in the exchange.

Vladislav Klyushin, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in the US for insider trading, was included.

Spanish and Russian journalist Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov was arrested in Poland in February 2022, shortly before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Polish authorities accused him of using his freelance journalism as a cover for intelligence operations.

This matter will be updated as the names of additional detainees are confirmed