Russia‘s release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is very good news. Others released in a major United States-Germany-Slovenia-Russia prisoner swap on Thursday include Americans Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva. Whelan was caught in an FSB sting operation and Kurmasheva for reporting on the war in Ukraine. A number of German citizens and residents and prominent Russian political opposition figures such as Vladimir Kara-Murza have also been released.
For its part, Russia has repatriated both SVR foreign intelligence service and GRU military intelligence service illegals, or spies operating without diplomatic cover. But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prize is Vadim Krasikov. A former FSB officer and member of the Russian domestic security service’s Vympel special forces unit, Krasikov assassinated a Chechen dissident in a Berlin park in 2019. Putin had been clear about his desire to see Krasikov traded for Gershkovich. The significant number of Germans freed in this exchange underlines the German government’s high price for being willing to release a killer.
To be clear, this deal was worth making. It brings necessary freedom for Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, and Kara-Murza, in particular. Still, Krasikov’s release means there are significant costs attached here.
At the strategic level, Putin has learned that if he exerts enough pressure, he’ll likely be able to secure the release even of his assassins. This will fuel Putin’s perception that the West is malleable to his will. Putin has skillfully played on rising U.S. elite sentiments in favor of getting Gershkovich home as soon as possible. He will have noticed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s pledge to bring Gershkovich back on his first day in office. Putin clearly assessed that the longer he waited, the more the Biden administration would pressure Germany to release Krasikov. And he was right. Gershkovich was an easy target of opportunity. Putin knew the reporter was simply doing his job, journalism, but all the Russian leader needed to do was pretend that Gershkovich was a spy, arrest him, and hold him for today’s event. He knows the West would never do the same thing.
More problematically, Krasikov’s release comes at a low cost for Putin. Germany introduced no significant sanctions on Russia following Krasikov’s 2019 assassination in a Berlin park. Now Krasikov is home and with him, a number of SVR and GRU illegal officers. Putin treasures these officers as heirs to the tradition of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate-Department S illegals unit and takes a personal interest in their exploits. He will use this release for domestic propaganda purposes. He will find inspiration to redouble his aggressive illegal activity.
Putin will also surely see this experience as proof that Russia can kill, sabotage, or otherwise conduct highly aggressive actions on Western soil with only marginal consequences. Putin is already testing Western resolve in the face of his escalation narratives in relation to Ukraine.
In a sense, then, this prisoner exchange will teach Putin the exact opposite lesson that he was taught in the aftermath of the GRU’s 2018 attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom. Then, the U.K. and its allies expelled hundreds of Russian intelligence officers from embassies all over the world. Now, as Russia attempts assassination and sabotage attacks in the West and manipulates the U.S. intelligence community’s willful ignorance of his more boutique aggressions, Putin has another reason to be bold.
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Ultimately, this was a deal worth making. The U.S. and Germany have brought home a number of innocent citizens and, on the German side at least, perhaps also some spies. But political celebrations should be calibrated to the costs this deal will carry.
Putin is the big winner and will be smiling. He has pulled off the art of a KGB deal.