Who did the West release in Thursday's prisoner exchange?

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right), greets Artem Dultsev, left, upon arrival of freed Russian prisoners at Vnukovo government airport outside Moscow on Aug 1, 2024. [AP Photo]

A convicted murderer, two sleeper agents and two people convicted of cyber fraud were among the eight Russians who were welcomed back to Moscow on Thursday as part of the deal that secured the release from Russian prisons of three Americans and more than a dozen other people.

Here's a look at the eight Russians:

Vadim Konoshchenok

Of the three Russians released by the United States in the swap, Konoshchenok was accused of perhaps the most serious crimes.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Konoshchenok played a key role in a scheme to acquire and supply Russia with "sensitive, American-made electronics and ammunition in furtherance of Russia’s war efforts and weapons development, violating U.S. export controls, economic sanctions and other criminal statutes.”

U.S. prosecutors also suspected him of having ties to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), noting that in emails Konoshchenok identified himself as an FSB "colonel" and included a photograph of himself wearing his FSB uniform.

Konoshchenok was detained in Estonia in October 2022 while attempting to cross the Estonian-Russian border with contraband. He was extradited to the United States in July 2023.

On Thursday, the day of the exchange, Konoshchenok's lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, filed a motion with the court to compel the provision of information about her client's whereabouts.

In comments to VOA, lawyers representing the interests of Russians who, according to media reports, could be released, said that, for the most part, they had not received official information about the possible inclusion of their clients on the exchange list.

Vladislav Klyushin

Klyushin is a businessman with alleged ties to the Kremlin.
In Russia, Klyushin owned an IT company that had been contracted to create a media monitoring system for the Russian government.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Klyushin participated in a criminal scheme: hacking into the computer systems of private companies and stealing their confidential data for subsequent use in insider financial transactions.

Klyushin was detained in Switzerland and extradited to the United States in December 2021.

In September 2023, Klyushin was sentenced to nine years in prison.

VOA was unable to contact Klyushin's lawyer.

Roman Seleznev

Of all the Russians released by the U.S., Seleznev was sentenced to the longest prison term – 27 years. Seleznev was also ordered to pay $170 million in damages.

He is the son of Valery Seleznev, a Russian State Duma deputy from the far-right Liberal Democratic Party.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Seleznev participated in a criminal scheme in which participants stole and sold the numbers of more than 2 million credit cards.

In 2014, Seleznev was detained in the Maldives and later extradited to the United States.

In August 2016, a federal jury in the U.S. state of Washington found Seleznev guilty on 38 counts. The following year, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Seleznev's lawyer, Igor Litvak, told VOA that he had made significant efforts to have Seleznev included in the exchange. But until the last moment, he had no information about whether his efforts had yielded results.

"I always thought Roman was the perfect trade candidate," Litvak said.

He noted that Seleznev has serious health problems because of injuries sustained during a terrorist attack in Morocco in 2011.

“Roman was arrested in the Maldives, they simply grabbed him, put him on a plane and took him to America,” the lawyer said.

On the eve of the exchange, Russian media reported that the names of five Russians had disappeared from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons’ database: Klyushin, Konoshchenok, Seleznev, Alexander Vinnik and Maxim Marchenko.

However, Vinnik and Marchenko were not included on the exchange list.

Marchenko pleaded guilty to smuggling dual-use microelectronics and was sentenced to three years in prison in July 2024.

Vinnik was one of the operators of the Russian cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, which was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges until U.S. law enforcement authorities shut it down in 2017. As reported by the U.S. Justice Department, in May 2024, Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

On the day of the prisoner swap, Vinnik’s lawyer, Arkady Bukh, told VOA that he had no indication his client was set to be included. Moreover, Vinnik had always been held in a county jail in northern California’s Alameda County, so his name would not have appeared in the U.S. federal prison database.

Pavel Rubtsov

A Spanish Russian citizen also known as Pablo Gonzalez, Pavel Rubtsov worked for Spanish media before his arrest in Poland shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Poland's Internal Security Agency identified Rubtsov as a Russian intelligence agent, “although some rights groups criticized Warsaw for holding him for more than two years without charge, and Reporters Without Borders called for his release,” The Associated Press reported.

Rubtsov was hired via a third-party freelance site and did some camera work for VOA in 2020 and 2021. At the time of his arrest, VOA released a statement saying that it had removed his content “out of an abundance of caution” and informed the VOA/USAGM security office of the arrest.

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva

A Russian couple arrested on espionage charges in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2022, Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva had reportedly posed as Argentine citizens and used Slovenia as a base starting in 2017 to travel to neighboring countries and convey Moscow's orders to other Russian sleeper agents.

After pleading guilty at a court in Ljubljana on Wednesday and receiving a 19-month prison sentence, they were released on time served.

Mikhail Mikushin

Mikushin, a former scientist and suspected Russian spy was arrested on espionage charges in Norway in 2022. According to Norway's domestic security agency, he had entered the country using a false identity, claiming to be a Brazilian citizen.

Vadim Krasikov

In 2021, Krasikov was convicted of the 2019 shooting death of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity who allegedly fought with separatists against Russian forces during the Second Chechen War. A German court ruled that Krasikov carried out the murder on the orders of Russia’s security services, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

As The Associated Press noted, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted at a possible swap for Krasikov earlier this year.