The Cold War roll call of prisoner swaps began in earnest in 1962, with the exchange of Rudolf Abel and Francis Gary Powers at the Glienicke Bridge between East and West Berlin.
Reflecting on his role as a young intelligence officer helping orchestrate the trade, Markus Wolf, the East German spymaster, told me that it was the highlight of his early career. “It meant what we did [in intelligence] mattered at the highest levels. We knew this would be in the history books and celebrated hard that night.”
In a new era of conflict between the West and Russia, we can add the names of Evan Gershkovich and Vadim Krasikov at the head of a long ticket of prisoners traded in the biggest swap since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Besides the joy at the release of Gershkovich, a reporter in Russia for the Wall Street Journal with a deep understanding of the country under the heel of Vladimir Putin, the implications of a multi-sided operation involving several other foreign and security services of Germany, the US and others, reach beyond the happy release of activists and journalists imprisoned in Russia.
This “carousel” style swap differs from most of the Soviet era agreements in one important way however: all of those released to the US – with the exception of the mysterious figure of Paul Whelan, a former marine who is a citizen of four countries – were journalists or political activists.
On the other side is a motley crew headed by a known........