The US has confirmed that 24 people were involved in a prisoner exchange between Russia and some Western countries, including the US and Germany.
Among the released prisoners are American citizens Evan Gershkovich – a reporter for the Wall Street Journal – and former US Marine Paul Whelan.
As part of the deal, Russian security service hitman Vadim Krasikov was released by Germany.
Speculation about a major swap between Russia and Western countries has been circulating for days. The speculation has increased after several prisoners were moved from their cells in Russian prisons to unknown locations.
Evan Gershkovich
American journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced earlier this month to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony after being found guilty of espionage.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first arrested by security services in March while on a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of Moscow.
Prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), allegations that are vehemently denied by Gershkovich, the WSJ and the US government.
It was the first conviction of an American journalist for espionage in Russia since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago. After his initial arrest, he was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.
Paul Whelan
Paul Whelan54, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow in 2018 on suspicion of espionage.
The ex-US Marine is a citizen of four countries: the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. His lawyer said he was being held in a prison in the Mordovia region.
After being discharged from the military in 2008 for misconduct, he became a security adviser and began traveling back and forth to Russia for work.
In December 2018, he was arrested by Russia’s FSB state security service, which claimed he had been “caught spying” in Moscow. His family has always denied the allegations.
Alsu Kurmasheva
On the same day Mr. Gershkovich was sentenced, the Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in a medium-security prison after a secret trial.
She was an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a program funded by the US government, and was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military.
Her husband Pavel Butorin said earlier that she was arrested because of a book published last year, which contained stories about Russians opposing the war in Ukraine.
Ms Kurmasheva, an American and Russian citizen, lived in Prague with her husband and two daughters. She was detained in June 2023 while visiting her mother in Russia.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a prominent Russian dissident and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Putin regime and an outspoken critic of the war in Ukraine and the internal repression of dissidents in Russia.
In 2023, the 42-year-old was sentenced to 25 years in prison for spreading “false” information about the Russian military and its ties to an “undesirable organization”.
Mr Kara-Murza, a former journalist and politician, denied all allegations.
The man, who has dual British and Russian nationality, was in a penal colony in Siberia, where his wife said he developed a neurological condition as a result of the poisoning.
Ilya Jashin
Ilya Yashin, one of Russia’s most prominent opposition leaders, was jailed in 2022 for “spreading fake news” about the country’s military.
He was arrested after condemning suspected Russian war crimes in Bucha.
After the death of former opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, Mr Yashin feared for his life.
He previously accused President Vladimir Putin of going “mad with power” in a series of letters from prison in the western Smolensk region where he was being held.
Oleg Orlov
Oleg Orlov is a Russian human rights activist who was jailed in February for calling Russia a fascist state and criticizing the war in Ukraine. He was previously chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Memorial.
The 71-year-old was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian armed forces.
In an appeal against his sentence in July, he compared the Russian legal system to that of Nazi Germany.
His conviction followed a retrial. In the original trial last October, he was fined 150,000 rubles (£1,290; $1,630) and walked free. His subsequent conviction marked a hardening of the repression against opponents of the war.
Lilia Chanysheva
Lilia Chanysheva was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison earlier this year after being accused of extremism by authorities.
She was the local coordinator of the anti-corruption network of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Initially sentenced to seven years in 2023, prosecutors appealed the sentence, saying officials found it too lenient. She was recently held at a center in the Perm region.
Ms. Chanysheva was the first of Mr. Navalny’s allies to be convicted on this charge. Most of his other activists have fled Russia into exile.
Ksenia Fadeyeva
Ksenia Fadeyeva was sentenced to nine years in prison by authorities after she was accused of organizing an extremist group.
She was a local organizer at Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where she was subsequently arrested.
Her lawyers argued that she had ended her ties to the organization before it was labeled an extremist group in 2021.
Most of Navalny’s former associates and allies have been forced to flee Russia into exile in recent years as the Kremlin has stepped up its crackdown on opposition groups.
Sasha Skochilenko
Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket price stickers with anti-war messages in November as a form of protest.
The replacement labels drew attention to the civilian deaths in Mariupol and said Russia had become a “fascist state.”
The St. Petersburg artist had been held in a detention center in the city since April 2023.
Kevin Lik
German-Russian citizen Kevin Lik was convicted of treason as a teenager, becoming the youngest person ever to be found guilty of such a crime.
He grew up in Germany and moved to Russia at the age of 12.
Authorities sentenced him to four years in prison last December for allegedly emailing photographs to “representatives of a foreign state” before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The court alleged that he had visited and photographed “deployment sites” of Russian troops.
Rico Krieger
German citizen Rico Krieger was accused of planting explosives in Belarus and was sentenced to death before being pardoned earlier this week by the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
In an elaborately choreographed interview with state media, he said he was acting on instructions from Ukraine, but no evidence was provided.
He is believed to have been the first Western citizen to be sentenced to death in Belarus.
Who are Vadim Krasikov and the other Russians released by the West?
One of the most prominent prisoners returned to Russia is Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Vadim Krasikov, who serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of an exiled Chechen commander in a Berlin park.
During his trial, prosecutors said he acted on orders from Russia and was part of a top-secret Vympel unit of the FSB.
Lawyers defending him insisted he was a construction worker, not a hitman. He denied being known as Krasikov and identified himself as Vadim Sokolov, the name on the passport he was traveling with.
In a recent interview with American talk show host Tucker Carlson, Putin indicated that his country is demanding the release of the “patriot” Krasikov in exchange for the American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Roman Seleznev was found guilty of carrying out a hacking plan in 2017, causing $169 million (£131 million) in damage.
According to U.S. officials, he stole credit card information from restaurants and sold it on the black market. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the scheme, which prosecutors say ran between 2009 and 2013.
According to the Justice Department, Mr. Seleznev used software that allowed him to steal millions of credit card numbers from thousands of companies.
His father is Valery Selezneva member of parliament and ally of Putin.
Vadim Konoshchenok
The US accused Vadim Konoshchenok relating to conspiracy to engage in procurement and money laundering on behalf of the Russian government in 2022.
He was also believed to be an FSB agent.
A U.S. Justice Department statement at the time said he and others had unlawfully purchased and exported highly sensitive electronic components, some of which could be used for military purposes.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva
Couple Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva were arrested in Slovenia and convicted of espionage.
They were each sentenced to 19 months in prison. Their two children also returned to Russia with them.
Maxim Marchenko
Maxim Marchenko was sentenced last month to three years in prison for smuggling US military technology into Russia during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, he and two other Russians used front companies in Hong Kong, where he lived, to hide where the technology was going.
Mikhail Valerevich Mikushin
University lecturer Mikhail Valeryevich Mikheshin was charged in Norway in 2022 with gathering intelligence on behalf of Russia, posing as a Brazilian academic.
Norwegian officials said he held a Brazilian passport and had been working as a researcher at the University of Tromso since 2021.
He reportedly used the name José Assis Giammaria.
It was also believed that Mr Mikushin had lied about his age, as he was 44 when he was charged, not 37.
Less information is publicly available about other Russians participating in the exchange.
Also among the suspects were Vladimir Dunaev, who was held in the US on suspicion of cybercrime, and Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in the US for insider trading.
Spanish-Russian journalist Pavel Alexeyevich Rubtsov was arrested in Poland in February 2022, shortly before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Polish authorities accuse him of using his freelance journalistic work as a cover for intelligence activities.
This story will be updated as more released prisoners become known
