A total of 26 prisoners — 24 adults and two minors — have been exchanged in the Turkish capital, Ankara. There had been indications in recent days that a swap might be about to take place.
The exchange included the American detainees Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, who had been jailed on charges of espionage, as well as the German national Rico K., who had previously been sentenced to death in Belarus. The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko pardoned Rico K. earlier this week.
Following the young man's detention in Belarus, Rico K.'s father has requested he not be fully named until his safe arrival in German had been confirmed.
Several Kremlin critics and Russian opposition politicians, including Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, have also been released. Yashin was being held in a penal colony in the Smolensk region. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in 2022 for "spreading false information" about the Russian army.
A total of eight Russian citizens have been returned to Russia. They include the alleged Russian intelligence agent Vadim Krasikov. He was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of another Russian citizen in Berlin's Tiergarten park in 2019.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
According to news agencies' reports, seven planes were involved in the exchange operation. The Turkish secret service said that prisoners from jails in Poland, Slovenia, Norway, and Belarus had also been........