Friday Briefing: Evan Gershkovich Freed in a Prisoner Swap
A sweeping prisoner swap yesterday involving seven countries freed the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans who were being held in Russia, along with several Russian opposition figures.
It was the most far-reaching exchange between Russia and the West in decades. Here’s the latest.
Western governments released eight people, including Vadim Krasikov, who had been sentenced to life in prison in Germany for assassinating a Chechen former fighter in Berlin.
Russia released 16 prisoners, including Oleg Orlov, a co-chairman of the human rights group Memorial; Vladimir Kara-Murza, who won the Pulitzer Prize this year for columns he had written for The Washington Post from his prison cell; and Ilya Yashin, a well-known opposition leader who was also behind bars. These are the 24 prisoners — from the U.S., Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia — who were released in the swap.
The linchpin of the deal for Russia was Krasikov’s release, which President Vladimir Putin had long sought. I asked my colleague Neil MacFarquhar, who has covered the Kremlin for years, why Putin wanted him back so much.
“Russia passed a law in 2006 which formally permitted the extrajudicial killing abroad of those Moscow accuses of extremism and terrorism,” Neil told me. “So in the eyes of the Kremlin, Krasikov’s assassination in Berlin of a Chechen separatist leader whom Russia labeled a terrorist was legitimate.”
“In addition, Krasikov was an agent of the F.S.B. — the successor agency of the K.G.B., where Putin spent the bulk of his career — so there was an element of rescuing one of his own,” he added.
At the White House, President Biden, who negotiated the release as he was considering leaving the presidential race, gave remarks surrounded by relatives of Gershkovich and of other freed prisoners. He said that he wished the prisoners “happy almost home” when he spoke with them earlier.
Inside the plan that killed a Hamas leader in Iran
A Times investigation found that Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas, was assassinated on Wednesday by an explosive device that was smuggled two months ago into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying. It was remotely triggered around 2 a.m.
The guesthouse is run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Haniyeh had stayed there several times when visiting Tehran, Middle Eastern officials said. Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the killing, but Israeli intelligence officials briefed the U.S. and other Western governments on the operation in its immediate aftermath.
Israel also claimed today that it had killed Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s armed wing, who is believed to have been one of the main planners of the Oct. 7 attacks. The Israeli military said that, based on an intelligence assessment, Deif had been killed in an airstrike in Gaza in mid-July.
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