Russia Prisoner Swap: ‘Why the UK Must do More to Help British Citizens in Trouble Overseas’

A rare moment of good news occurred last week when a group of Russian political prisoners and foreigners unjustly detained by Vladimir Putin’s regime were reunited with their families following the largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history.

This diplomatic feat, overseen by US President Joe Biden just hours before his withdrawal from the US Presidential race, involved months of complex negotiations with governments across Europe to identify suitable candidates for the swap, coordinate the logistics, and persuade Putin to accept the deal.  

Those released include three American nationals – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US marine Paul Whelan, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, five Germans, and seven Russian dissidents, including prominent Kremlin critic, Vladimir Kara-Murza, serving 25 years on trumped-up treason charges.  

In return, Russia received back eight people. This included KGB agent Vadim Krasikov, whose release appeared essential for Putin to agree the deal, and who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a Georgian citizen who had fought Russian troops in Chechnya. It also included three men detained in the US, two men from Norway and Poland, and two Russian “sleeper” agents jailed in Slovenia – whose own children apparently had no idea their parents were Russian until they landed in Moscow after the exchange.  

Such deals always involve difficult calculations. In this case, the West had to swallow releasing several convicted criminals, including one guilty of murder, in order to free their nationals, detained by Russia on spurious charges for political leverage. President Biden acknowledged “deals like this come with tough calls”, but added “there’s nothing that matters more to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad”.   

Critics argue that these kinds of prisoner exchanges incentivise rogue states or terrorist groups to kidnap even more foreigners, and that it is a sign of weakness to even consider negotiating with them.  Former US President Donald Trump was quick to bash the deal, suggesting incorrectly on his Truth Social platform that the US had paid for the hostages’ release, and asking “are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs?”  

Earlier this year, I heard Ambassador Roger Carstens, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the US State Department, and Senator Peter Welch, who helped pass the legislation setting up Carsten’s office, set out the case for why engagement is justified.  

Carsten, a plain-talking former Special Forces officer, described how his office had been established out of failure, following the death of five Americans captured by ISIS in Syria, and the shabby treatment of their anguished families by US officials, who passed them off from agency to agency without providing a central point of contact and communication.  

In 2015, the Obama administration created a more structured process to determine when someone had been “wrongfully” detained, and a number of inter-agency bodies under the authority of the White House to conduct a more pro-active approach to hostage cases. Carsten’s office was responsible for the diplomatic element of trying to free hostages, supporting their families, and preventing future cases, for example by trying to stop Americans travelling to dangerous places, or raising the costs for hostage takers. He said: “You have to be a true believer to work here – you can’t be stiff; you can’t fake it. You either care in your heart, or you work somewhere else.”  

Carsten recognised the concern that prisoner exchanges created incentives for new kidnaps. But, he wondered if the analysis was wrong. When his office was established, there were 55 cases of wrongful detention, and now there were only around 30. He said that under Biden, who he described as intimately involved in the details of every case, his office had been able to free 47 Americans – a “pretty decent record”. (This was before the latest releases).  

Senator Welch said there was always a reflexive attitude in government not to negotiate with hostage takers. This made sense in the abstract, unless it was your family member who was detained. Previously, it had also been impossible for relatives of detainees to find out what was happening. They often ended up being treated as “annoyances”. Now there was a new humanity towards them embedded in the process.   

I also talked this year to Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, and a noted activist in her own right, who has campaigned relentlessly for the rights of all political prisoners in Russia.

She told me of her anger and frustration at the lack of action by the British government to secure the release of her husband, who had British citizenship.  She said most democracies were poorly equipped to deal with the growing hostage crisis. They clung to their stance that they did not negotiate with hostage takers, even though this position made no difference to autocratic regimes, who seized foreigners anyway.

Every Western democracy needed to establish an office similar to the US Office of Hostage Affairs, not just to negotiate prisoner exchanges, but to get on the front foot in dealing with the problem, to show autocrats that the free world took such cases seriously, and would fight for the return of their citizens.  

Another critic of the “no negotiations” stance is Bill Browder, an American-born financier based in London, who was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on Russian human rights violators, named after his former associate in Moscow, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in Russian custody.

In an interview with my co-host on the Disorder Podcast, Jason Pack, shortly after the death in a Siberian gulag of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, Browder argued that it was in the West’s interests to coordinate an old fashioned “Bridge of Spies” prisoner swap because “if and when Putin’s regime crumbles, we’ll need people who believe in democracy and freedom running the government there”.  

He went on to describe how, at the Munich Security Conference in February, immediately after Navalny’s death, he had asked up to a dozen European Foreign Ministers if they’d be willing to participate in a prisoner exchange to get Kara-Murza out. Every one had agreed – except the UK.

He said this was “particularly shocking since Vladimir has a British passport. The UK is going to sit this one out? This is outrageous, insulting to British citizens, and a terrible precedent. It shows total lack of maturity. The British government should have a nuanced policy that deals with each hostage case as it comes up and figure out what to do.” 

All those involved in last week’s exchanges have acknowledged that many more foreigners and political prisoners remain unjustly detained. Commenting on last week’s release, Browder said: “We should also not forget hundreds of other political prisoners who continue to rot in Putin’s jails and urge for their imminent release.” President Biden said: “I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family.” 

Even the freed Russians appeared conflicted about their release, at their first press conference. Kara-Murza said the exchange was “a drop in the ocean, because so many innocent people who’ve never committed a crime in their life are being held in torturous conditions”. Another freed Russian, llya Yashin, expressed gratitude for those who had worked to free him, but said his first desire was to buy a ticket to return to Russia: “I’m not the only one who demanded not to be sent into exile…but no-one asked our opinion.”  

Controversially, Kara-Murza also urged people in the West to understand that “Russia and Putin are not the same. Sanctions should target the criminals and Putin’s regime, not the citizens of the Russian Federation based on their nationality.”

These comments triggered a deluge of negative feedback on social media both from supporters of Ukraine, and even some of his strongest admirers in the West.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landbergis posted on X that, “I hear talk of ordinary Russians’ innocence, but then I see ordinary Russians murdering ordinary Ukrainians. I see ordinary Russian mothers saying goodbye to their ordinary Russian sons, and wishing them good luck with their ordinary Russian war crimes…Ordinary Russia is sick. So about those ‘unfair’ sanctions against ‘ordinary Russians’…Well, anything which slows down Russia’s total war machine will have ordinary Lithuanians’ support.”  

Kara-Murza’s remarks may have been unwise, but the attacks on him seem particularly harsh, when the main reason he was in prison was because of his outspoken opposition to the war in Ukraine, and his role as one of the chief architects of the Magnitsky Act, alongside Browder. Such is the challenge for a true Russian patriot – trying to advocate for genuine democracy in his country, while criticising its leaders.  

The question now is whether this latest exchange will pave the way for more such deals with Russia, close off options, until the West has more high value Russian detainees in their possession for which Putin is willing to trade, or lead to the seizure of even more foreign nationals by Russia as bargaining chips.

Options under consideration by the US to try to prevent the latter include requiring those planning to visit dangerous countries to sign a waiver acknowledging the risks, or even issuing a ban on travel to certain countries, such as Iran, Russia or North Korea. 

Another issue is whether the new British government under Keir Starmer might be more willing than its predecessor to play a part in any future prisoner exchanges.

Following the  case of Iranian-British dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose release from detention in Iran was only secured after years of lobbying by her husband, who at one point even went on hunger strike outside the Foreign office, a cross-party parliamentary group was set up to investigate the UK’s approach to hostage situations.

In 2023 the committee reported that the UK government was “failing British citizens”, with detainees and families reporting “ministerial clumsiness, serious and avoidable errors and even callous and hurtful comments”.  

As a former diplomat, I can testify to the somewhat dismissive attitude of some Foreign Office officials towards the relatives of British citizens in trouble overseas, who were often regarded as nuisances for pestering us with questions. However, I also know that huge efforts have been made in recent years to improve family engagement.  

The parliamentary report recommended the creation of a new government role, director for arbitrary and complex detentions, to act as a point of contact for families and improve coordination across Whitehall. Perhaps, in light of the latest successful prisoner exchange, the idea will now catch on.