What the prisoner swap shows about negotiations with Putin

This newsletter is about the big prisoner swap the to place this week, where Russia released 16 prisoners, and a range of Western countries released eight Russian citizens. It is not going to be a detailed account of exactly what took place, or who the individual prisoners were. Rather I want to add some reflections about different topics that have been highlighted by this prisoner swap.

Making deals with Putin

I’ve seen some people making the argument that this prisoner swap shows that we can make deals with the Russians, and that it therefore gives some basis for optimism about broader peace negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine. I think that is a wrong conclusion. First, it is not surprising that we can make deals with Russia about prisoner swaps. Ukraine regularly exchanges prisoners of war with Russia, and Russia and the West have also done this before. The fact that these types of deals are possible is really not spectacular. Of course it is possible to make deals with Putin when he has an interest in making a deal.

The interest that Putin had in making a deal this time was to get a group of Russian state-sponsored hitmen, fraudsters, spies, and hackers out of prisons in the West. This sends an important message to other people who might be the future killers and saboteurs that Russia will send to Western countries: “If you are caught, we will do everything we can to bring you home. You don’t need to make deals with the Western prosecutors, because we will get you out of prison long before your term is over. And by all means don’t reveal any secrets, because you might be back in Russia and held accountable before you know it.”

That is why Russia was so eager to get this group of bandits home. Putin doesn’t have the same kind of interest in making a peace deal about Ukraine, and therefore there is little reason to assuming that there is any basis for negotiations with him about that.

But another reason not to get overly excited about the possibilities of negotiations with Russia is that this prisoner swap was essentially the result of a hostage situation. Since about 2018, Russia has started a practice of taking Western citizens as hostages to be used for prisoner exchanges such as this one. Russia ultimately doesn’t care about these people, and the only reason they are in prison is that they can be used for political leverage. So there was an asymmetry in terms of the people that were exchanged. The Russians got back a bunch of people who had actually done something criminal in Western countries, and in return the West got back a group of people that had done nothing wrong but were held hostages by the Russian government. This is far from the types of spy exchanges that took place during the Cold War, and it is hardly a practice that gives Western politicians confidence that Putin is an honest man that we can make deals with.

The value of alliances

Most of the released Westerners were American citizens, but the United States did not have any imprisoned Russian citizens that could be released as part of the deal. It’s interesting that despite the fact that none of the people that Russia wanted back were in an American prison, they still predominantly took American citizens to be used as leverage. This shows how they see the relationship between the United States and other countries in the West. In the Russian perspective, if they want to make any deal with the Western countries, they have to make sure that the United States has the leading role in the negotiations.

But for the United States this also shows the value of alliances. This deal only came about because the United States was able to persuade Germany to release Vadim Krasikov, who committed a murder in Berlin in 2019. He was the person that Putin most wanted to get back among all the prisoners, but the German government was far from enthusiastic about releasing him. Ultimately, they did it as a gesture to the United States, and they did it because a group of Russian dissidents was also released from prison and sent to the West as part of the deal.

The question of how valuable alliances are to the United States is an important point of debate right now, as there is an isolationist tendency in especially the Republican Party. This prisoner exchange illustrates one of the things that the United States is able to do because it has strong alliances, and it wouldn’t have been possible if the relationship with Germany had been bad.

Exchanging Russian dissidents

The inclusion of Russian dissidents in the prisoner swap will be more consequential than the Western citizens that were held as hostages. This is where Putin had to give something real that he probably would have preferred not to give as part of the deal.

The Russian opposition has previously struggled to organize amongst themselves, and too often they have ended up in internal quarrels instead of directing their energy toward a common resistance against the Putin government. But if they can get the best out of the situation, then it truly is a remarkable list of high profiles and extremely gifted people that have now been released. People like Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin are not quite on Navalny’s level in terms of charisma and popularity, but it is pretty close. Some might even say that they are stronger thinkers than Alexey Navalny.

One of the things that have divided the Russian opposition so far is the discussion about whether they can best achieve their goals by operating inside of Russia (and ending up in prison really fast), or if it is better to use their voice from exile in the West. The people who were released as part of the prisoner swap all belong to the first category. They had stayed in Russia because in their mind they had to be in Russia to reach the Russian people. It is interesting that in their first press conference after the exchange, several of them expressed that they had preferred to stay in a Russian prison rather than being exchanged. They believe that they had a stronger voice from a Russian prison than they will be able to have from exile in the West.

I hope they will be able to make the best of the situation. If these people can work constructively with the existing Russian exile opposition in the West, then this is a dramatic boost for their collective voice. It truly is some magnificent thinkers and communicators that have been released.