The Kremlin is acknowledging for the first time that some of the prisoners released back to Russia this week are members of Russian security and intelligence services.
Vadim Krasikov was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen fighter in Berlin. While German judges said the murder was carried out on orders from Russian authorities, Moscow has denied those accusations until now.
Peskov told reporters on Aug. 2 that Krasikov is an officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB). He also said Krasikov once served in the FSB’s elite Alpha unit, alongside some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bodyguards.
When he did, he was greeted personally by Putin, who hugged the assassin. Putin then embraced each of the Russian returnees as they stepped off the plane and promised them state awards and a “talk” about their “future.”
“Naturally, they also greeted each other yesterday when they saw each other,” Peskov said, underscoring Putin’s high interest in including Kresikov in the swap.
Peskov also confirmed that Artem Dultsov and Anna Dultsova, who were released from Slovenia after being convicted of espionage charges, were undercover intelligence officers commonly known in Russia as “illegals.”
The couple posed as Argentine expats in Slovenia for a half-decade and were responsible for relaying Moscow’s orders to other sleeper agents in the country until they were arrested in 2022.
Peskov said the couple’s two young children joined them on their flight back to Russia via Turkey.
He said the children didn’t speak Russian, didn’t know who Putin was, and only learned their parents were Russian nationals during the flight to Moscow.
“That’s how illegals work, and that’s the sacrifices they make because of their dedication to their work,” Peskov said.
The multinational prisoner swap was mediated by Turkey and involved 24 prisoners between the United States, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Slovenia on one side and Russia and Belarus on the other.
Moscow freed 15 people in the exchange including Americans, Germans, and Russian dissidents. Belarus released a German national as well.
In exchange for the release of journalists and activists that it had wrongfully detained, Russia received the three Russian agents, as well as five more people who were either accused of being spies or convicted of financial and cybercrimes.
As was the case then, the White House has been pressed on whether its calculus was correct in providing hardened security and intelligence operatives to Russia in exchange for wrongfully convicted civilians.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the need to preserve Americans’ well-being was worth the potential risk to national security.
“From our perspective, we have assessed and analyzed that risk, and we have judged that the benefit of reuniting Americans and bringing people home ... outweighs the risk,” Sullivan said during an Aug. 1 press briefing.
“It is difficult to send back a convicted criminal to secure the release of an innocent American, and yet sometimes the choice is between doing that and consigning that person basically to live out their days in prison in a hostile foreign country or in the hands of a hostile power.”
