MOSCOW (Reuters) – An extensive east-west prisoner swap, involving 26 people, took place in Ankara on Thursday, the Turkish presidency said.
What are some of the previous most prominent prisoner exchanges between Russia or the Soviet Union and the U.S.?
FEBRUARY 1962: “BRIDGE OF SPIES” EXCHANGE
In the first major prisoner exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Rudolf Abel, a convicted Soviet spy, was swapped for Francis Gary Powers, an American pilot. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge, which marked the border between the Eastern bloc and West Berlin and was commonly known as the “Bridge of Spies.” The bridge would feature in several high-profile swaps during the Cold War.
Abel, a British-born Soviet intelligence officer, had worked for the KGB in New York. He served four years of a 30-year sentence before being exchanged.
Powers was piloting a U-2 spy plane when his aircraft was shot down in 1960 over present-day Yekaterinburg in Russia’s Urals region. Powers parachuted to safety only to be captured by the Soviets and later convicted of espionage.
JUNE 1985: THE BIGGEST AGENT SWAP
In what was the biggest trade of government agents in history, Marian Zacharski, a Polish former intelligence officer convicted of espionage against the U.S., was swapped alongside three other Eastern Bloc agents for 23 Westerners jailed for espionage in Warsaw Pact countries.
The swap, which also took place on the Glienicke Bridge, came after three years of negotiations.
FEBRUARY 1986: SHARANSKY SWAP
The Glienicke Bridge once again played host to this exchange involving Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, known also as Natan Sharansky, and Czechoslovak nationals Karl and Hana Koecher.
The first political prisoner released by then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Sharansky had spent nine years in prison on charges of spying on behalf of the U.S. He was swapped alongside three low-level Western spies for the Koechers, who had moved to the U.S. and infiltrated the CIA, as well as several other Soviet bloc spies imprisoned in West Germany.
SEPTEMBER 1986: JOURNALIST EXCHANGE
In a case reminiscent of Evan Gershkovich, Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report in the Soviet Union, was arrested and accused of espionage by the KGB.
Daniloff, who said he had been framed, was jailed for less than a month before he was allowed to fly out of the Soviet Union without standing trial.
The Reagan administration believed Daniloff had been arrested in retaliation for the detention three days earlier in New York of Gennadi Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations.
The two men were swapped after weeks of negotiations alongside Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, a founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group who subsequently moved to the United States.
JULY 2010: ILLEGALS PROGRAM
The most recent mass prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington saw ten Russian sleeper agents detained in the U.S. as part of the so-called ‘Illegals Program’ exchanged for four prisoners held in Russia.
The swap, which took place on the tarmac of Vienna International Airport, came after the FBI said a multi-year investigation had broken open a sleeper agent network of Russian spies planted in the U.S. by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
One of the swapped individuals was Sergei Skripal, a colonel in Russia’s Military Intelligence Service (GRU) who was convicted of high treason for working as a double agent for Britain. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were later the subjects of a botched assassination attempt by poisoning in Salisbury, England in 2018.
APRIL 2022: TREVOR REED
A U.S. Marine veteran arrested in Russia in 2019 for attacking a police officer, Reed, who denied the charge, was released in April 2022, two months after the start of the Ukraine war, for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and aviation transport expert imprisoned in the U.S. for drug smuggling.
DECEMBER 2022: GRINER AND BOUT
Less than a year after Reed’s release, U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a high-stakes swap that came amid worsening relations between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine.
The pair were swapped at the Al Bateen Executive Airport in Abu Dhabi. Several other Americans held by Russia, including former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and schoolteacher Marc Fogel – who are both serving lengthy sentences – were notably left out of the exchange.
(Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Philippa Fletcher)
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