Why Germany was key to prisoner swap deal with Russia

The German government played a key role in Thursday's prisoner swap between Russia and the West, in which Moscow released 16 prisoners in exchange for eight Russians held in the West.

The main figure in the swap, which involved several countries, was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of killing a former Chechen militant in Berlin in 2019.

Russia had approached the United States as early as 2022 with an offer to release US prisoners in exchange for Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany. However, because Krasikov was not an American prisoner, US officials did not think the offer was serious.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently said in an interview with US talk show host Tucker Carlson that he was open to a prisoner exchange involving Krasikov.

However, the decision to release Krasikov was politically complicated for Germany, given the brazenness of the murder. It took place in broad daylight in a Berlin park, just a short walk from parliament and the Chancellery.

Why did Germany release Krasikov?

"It was not easy for anyone to make this decision to deport a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years in prison," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who interrupted his summer vacation to greet some of the released prisoners upon their arrival in Germany. 

The state's interest in enforcing the prison sentence had to be weighed against the liberty of innocent people imprisoned in Russia and those unjustly imprisoned for political reasons, Scholz added.

"That is why it was important to us that we have an obligation to protect German nationals as well as solidarity with the United States," Scholz said, adding that both he and German opposition leader Friedrich Merz agreed with the decision.

After meeting with some of the prisoners on their arrival in Germany, Scholz insisted the swap was "the right decision, and if you had any doubts, you will lose them after talking to those who are now free."

"Many of the prisoners feared for their health and even their lives," he added.

The German section of the Amnesty International human rights organization said there was a "bitter taste" to the deal since it created an equivalence between "a murderer ... convicted in a fair trial" and "people who have just exercised their right to free speech."

A 'deal with the devil'

An opinion piece in the mass-market Bild newspaper said that while the release of activists and German citizens held unfairly in Russia was to be welcomed, "the perverse message given to the Russian people is that Putin is a hero" for "saving murderers."

German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit, however, defended Krasikov's release.

"The release was only possible because Russian citizens with intelligence backgrounds who were imprisoned in Europe were deported and transferred to Russia," Hebestreit told reporters.

Michael Roth, the head of the German parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, summed up Berlin's decision on X, formerly Twitter, by saying, "Sometimes, for reasons of humanity, you have to do a deal with the devil."

Biden thanks Germany for concessions

US President Joe Biden acknowledged that Germany had to make significant concessions to achieve the prisoner exchange. He said he "particularly" owed "a great sense of gratitude" to Scholz.

The deal "required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question," Biden said.

In January, Biden personally approached Scholz about the possibility of a prisoner swap, to which Scholz responded: "For you, I will do this," Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Thursday.

The strength of the US-German alliance

Danielle Gilbert, a political scientist at Northwestern University, told DW that leaders in the United States and Germany decided it was worth making the "painful, difficult decision to secure the freedom of prisoners unjustly held in Russia."

"The leaders who are engaged in this diplomacy are trying to do whatever it is they can to get the best deal they can to bring their citizens home," Gilbert said.

She said Biden called on "the strong allies of the United States, particularly calling on Germany and the strength of that alliance" and focused on "making sure that there were prisoners released as part of this deal that would be important to Germany."

Gilbert added that the size of the deal struck her after several one-for-one exchanges between the US and Russia. 

"To see 24 people being exchanged as part of this deal from 7 different countries and that's a huge amount of coordination and shows that sometimes to get a deal done you have to put more on the table," Gilbert said.

A total of 12 prisoners released by Russia went to Germany. They included opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who had been jailed for criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Rico Krieger, a German who had been sentenced to death in Belarus on espionage charges before being pardoned this week.

dh/sms (AP, dpa, Reuters)

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