Moscow/Ankara(Reuters): Jailed U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among 26 prisoners from the United States, Russia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Belarus being freed in a major east-west exchange on Thursday, Turkey’s presidency said.
It said 10 prisoners, including two minors, had been moved to Russia, 13 to Germany and three to the United States.
Turkish intelligence had announced that it was coordinating an extensive prisoner exchange, amid signs of a major swap between Russia and Belarus on one side and Western countries including the United States and Germany on the other.
“Our organisation has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.
Both the Kremlin and the White House declined to comment when asked about a possible exchange.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, before heading back to the Russian capital.
Reuters footage showed a Russian government plane on the ground in the Turkish capital Ankara.
Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, had suddenly disappeared from view in recent days, according to their lawyers. At least seven Russian dissidents had been unexpectedly moved from their prisons.
A lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place”.
RIA had also reported that four Russians jailed in the United States had disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
In the West, the dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully detained political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
Among those Moscow has signalled it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving life in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using fake identities, and said they would be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm that.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Filipp Lebedev and Lucy Papachristou in London, Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Ros Russell and Jon Boyle)
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