Americans Gershkovich and Whelan included in big Russia-West prisoner swap

The White House said the U.S. had negotiated the complex trade with Russia and other countries. It said eight prisoners held in the West were being sent back to Russia.

Germany confirmed that they included Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murdering an exiled dissident in Berlin.

Turkey, which coordinated the exchange, said 10 prisoners, including two minors, had been moved to Russia, 13 to Germany and three to the United States. Also involved in the swap were Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Belarus.

"After the completion of the ratification procedures of the parties, the health checks ... the prisoners were placed on the planes of the countries to which they would be travelling with the approval and instructions of the MIT," the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.

It said it had authorised the return of the aircraft.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not specifically confirm a swap but was quoted by the state news agency TASS as saying that, in principle, "all our enemies should stay there (abroad), and all those who are not our enemies should return".

In the last major exchange in 2010, 14 prisoners were exchanged.

In December 2022, Russia traded U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S.

Krasikov is a colonel in the Russian FSB security service who was serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park. President Vladimir Putin had indicated he wanted him back.

Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death in Belarus on terrorism charges, was pardoned on Tuesday by President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally.

He was also among those released, along with Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, Turkey said.