Who the West handed over in the prisoner swap that freed Evan Gershkovich

The West unveiled a hitman, a convicted hacker and several suspected Russian spies on Thursday as part of the largest prisoner swap in modern history – when three imprisoned Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, were returned to the United States.

Officials from the U.S., Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Russia and Belarus met on the tarmac of an airfield in Ankara, Turkey, and exchanged at least two dozen people, including Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.

Meanwhile, eight prisoners held in the West have been sent back to Russia, including three from the US.

These are the prisoners who were released back to Russia.

Vadim Krasikov

Vadim Krasikov, a former high-ranking colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSS) and a professional assassin, was at the top of Moscow’s list and a key player in the exchange of barbs.

The convicted Russian killer was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of Chechen fighter Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili on the orders of the Russian government in 2019. He was convicted by a German court in 2021.

The brutal murder in broad daylight was a political assassination ordered by the Russian government, German prosecutors said.

“The Russian Federation will not let me rot in prison,” the killer once told a prison guard, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Vladislav Klyushin

The US has freed convicted hacker Vladislav Klyushin, a businessman with Kremlin ties who received a nine-year sentence in a US prison for his role in a $93 million insider trading scheme.

The plan involved hacking secret information about profits from several companies.

Klyushin was part of a group of hackers who downloaded unannounced earnings reports from hundreds of companies, including Tesla and Microsoft, which he and others used to trade before the news became public, according to prosecutors.

Romano Seleznev

Roman Seleznev, a convicted hacker and credit card fraudster, was also released by the US to Russia.

Seleznev was sentenced to 27 years in a US prison in 2017 for orchestrating a cyberattack on thousands of US companies, resulting in losses of $169 million.

The hacker infiltrated point-of-sale systems to steal and sell credit card information.

His sentence was the longest ever imposed for hacking in the United States.

Vadim Konoshchenok

Vadim Konoshchenokm, an alleged officer of Russia’s FSS, was extradited from Estonia to the US last year to face charges of smuggling ammunition and dual-use technology to aid Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

He was detained in 2022 while trying to return to Russia from Estonia with about three dozen types of semiconductors and electronic components, according to U.S. prosecutors.

Artem Dultsev is Anna Dultseva

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a Russian spy couple, were sentenced to 19 months in prison in Slovenia on Wednesday after pleading guilty to espionage — but were released after serving their sentence.

The pair ran an online art gallery and had an IT business while also working secretly for Russian intelligence.

Pablo Gonzalez

Spanish-Russian citizen Pablo González, whose Russian name is Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, was also returned to Russia.

González, a reporter covering the war in Ukraine for Spanish media, was arrested in Poland on suspicion of conducting intelligence activities in 2022. Poland’s Internal Security Agency identified him as a Russian intelligence agent.

He denied the allegations, Voice of America reported.

Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin

Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin was arrested in Norway in 2022 on suspicion of being a Russian spy after claiming to be a Brazilian academic working at the Arctic University of Norway.

With information from the New York Post