In Thursday’s extraordinary prisoner exchange between Russia and several Western countries, my friend Vladimir Kara-Murza has been released from captivity. A Moscow court had sentenced him to 25 years for the unforgivable “crime” of speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This spring, Vladimir won a Pulitzer Prize for the columns he has continued to write for The Washington Post. I can only imagine how ecstatic his family (who live in the United States) will be to have him back.
The same goes for the families of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned on trumped-up espionage charges; Paul Whelan, who has spent more than five years in prison on similar bogus charges; and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter also wrongly accused. Several Russian human rights activists were also released Thursday, many of them jailed for public opposition to Moscow’s bloody war in Ukraine.
Amid the rejoicing, though, it’s vital to see clearly what has just happened. Experience shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use the prisoner exchange to advance his own false narrative — to misguide his own people and the world.
Don’t believe any of it.
The Russian propaganda machine will depict this exchange as a modern-day counterpart to those dramatic Cold War moments when the West and the Soviet Union traded imprisoned spies. (For context, watch the 2015 film “Bridge of Spies” about the 1962 exchange of downed CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.)
Why? Because Putin wants to suggest that the groups traded in today’s swap are equivalent. The Russians Moscow is bringing home are a motley crew of spies and criminals arrested in the United States and Europe. The Russian president will no doubt cast the released Americans and Russian dissidents in precisely the same terms: as foreign agents working for the nefarious West.
Putting Russia and its opponents on the same moral level implicitly undermines the legitimacy of Putin’s critics. When it comes to espionage and subversion, after all, both sides are equally culpable, right?
But consider the people whom Putin went to such effort to free. The most notorious is Vadim Krasikov, who was apprehended in Berlin in 2019 shortly after gunning down a former leader of the Chechen independence movement. 
Krasikov, whom German authorities have linked with Putin’s Federal Security Service (FSB), has also been implicated in a murder in Moscow six years earlier. This man is a coldblooded killer; there is nothing remotely noble about him. Yet Putin has referred to him publicly as a “patriot” who implicitly deserves to be feted as a hero.
Also heading home to Moscow are two Russian spies, Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who were just convicted by a court in Slovenia. The two were sleeper agents, masquerading as a couple from Argentina. This might sound benign enough — until you realize that the Russians have a track record of using just these sorts of deep-cover agents to recruit and maintain networks for all sorts of subversive activities.
Since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, the Russians have been caught committing acts of sabotage across Europe, in some cases recruiting locals to do their dirty work. Moscow also continues to sow disinformation and covertly court political allies across the continent.
Putin’s “patriots” also include three Russians who are being released from federal prisons in the United States, where they have been serving sentences for a variety of crimes. One of them, Roman Seleznev, was convicted on fraud and identity theft charges. One might ask: Why would Putin go to such trouble to win the freedom of a bunch of random thugs?
The Russians who are being welcomed by the West couldn’t be more different. Kara-Murza, a British as well as Russian citizen, is among the most idealistic people I’ve ever met. He could easily have lived out the rest of his life in the West — but insisted on returning to Moscow to pursue peaceful political change despite the obvious dangers. He is a true Russian patriot, committed to the hope that his fellow citizens will one day find freedom. Before he was imprisoned, he survived not one but two assassination attempts by poison. He has paid the price for his commitment to a better future for his country.
Ilya Yashin is another longtime dissident who landed in prison after publicly accusing Russian troops of war crimes in Ukraine. He, too, refused to leave, saying he believed that “antiwar voices sound louder and more convincing if the person remains in Russia.” His speech to the court at his sentencing hearing is one of the most eloquent indictments of Putin’s regime I’ve heard.
For years, the Kremlin has tried to discredit its foes by tarring them as “foreign agents,” “extremists” and “terrorists.” In reality, people like Kara-Murza and Yashin have acted as defenders of their people’s rights and freedoms. They aren’t spies and never have been — and you can be sure that Putin knows it. But he can’t afford to admit that. He can’t allow that plenty of Russians want to change their country for the better — that they, not the cyberthugs and murderers, are the real patriots.
