Russia is reportedly seeking the return of several alleged hackers, spies and assassins as part of a historic prisoner exchange with several Western countries.
The prisoner swap between the U.S., Russia, Germany, Slovenia and Belarus is likely to happen on Thursday in Turkey, according to multiple reports. Most reports rely on anonymous sources inside the U.S. and Russia, as well as data from the flight tracking site Flightradar24, which tracks the movement of government planes.
Neither Russia, the U.S., nor other countries reportedly involved in the exchange have officially confirmed that it’s happening.
CBS News and other publications reported that Russia will release several U.S. citizens, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.
The list of Russian nationals expected to be released from the U.S. as part of the exchange allegedly includes Alexander Vinnik, Vladislav Klyushin, Roman Seleznev and Vladimir Dunaev — all sentenced on cybercrime-related charges.
Their names have recently disappeared from the public electronic database of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, suggesting a potential swap, according to media reports.
Vinnik pleaded guilty earlier in May to participating in a money-laundering scheme involving one of the world’s largest virtual currency exchanges, BTC-е, which processed over $9 billion in transactions and served over a million users worldwide, including in the U.S.
Vinnik’s lawyer, Arkady Bukh, told Russian state news media RIA Novosti on Thursday that he knows nothing about his client’s possible exchange, adding that Vinnik is still located in a U.S. prison.
Another Russian citizen who Russia reportedly plans to get back is local businessman Vladislav Klyushin, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in the U.S. for his role in a $93 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret corporate information stolen through the hacking of U.S. computer networks.
Russian hacker Seleznev was sentenced to 27 years in prison back in 2017 for stealing and selling millions of credit card numbers and causing more than $169 million in damage to small businesses and financial institutions, including those in the U.S.
Dunaev, a Russian developer of Trickbot malware, was sentenced to five years and four months in prison earlier in January. According to court documents, he was involved in developing and deploying malicious software to launch cyberattacks against American hospitals, schools and businesses.
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