Russia and the West this week went ahead with a “historic exchange” of prisoners. Moscow released 16 people held in Russian prisons, including three American citizens. And the Russian president, Vladimir Putin may have prepared a whole fiesta to welcome the ex-prisoners, but Politico reports that dozens more remain incarcerated in Russian prisons.

Thursday’s dramatic deal was cheered by many in the West and in Russian circles, with 16 political prisoners freed from the clutches of the Kremlin. How the final list of prisoners involved in the exchange was drawn up is a sealed secret that diplomats will never reveal. But what is clear is that some 1,000 political prisoners continue to languish in Russian detention centers and penal colonies.

For them and their supporters, this week’s “historic exchange” gives them hope and at the same time destroys their own prospects for a swift end to the hell they live in.

And despite the fact that the foreign prisoners are the ones who catch the eye, most political hostages in Russian prisons are… Russians. To the outside world, and to a large section of state television, they are invisible. To their marginalized but often stoic fighters, they are heroes.

One person many were surprised to learn was not included in the exchange is opposition politician Alexei Gorinov, the first to be sentenced to a heavy prison term (seven years) in July 2022 for criticizing Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In a detention center in Vladimir, east of Moscow, today and suffering from chronic lung disease, 63-year-old Gorinov was recently indicted on new charges, this time for “publicly justifying terrorism” after discussing the Ukraine war with other prisoners.

Besides Gorinov there are many other prominent prisoners. Some, like Yuri Dmitriev, a historian of Soviet repression, were imprisoned years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Others have fallen victim to Russia’s wartime crackdown on free speech, such as actresses Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petrichuk, who are accused of “justifying terrorism” in a play they staged.

Taken together, their cases – and hundreds of others – chart the Kremlin’s widening wave of repression that has left no part of society unmoved and shows no sign of abating.

Gorinov’s lawyer, Denis Sedov, told Politico that he had not contacted his client before the exchange. But, like many others, he confessed to having “mixed feelings”. It was a positive development that some of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures were now free, he said. However, he emphasized that this does not change the direction of the Putin regime at home. “Repression is part of their policy,” he said.

A unique event

This week’s deal was extraordinary in its complexity and scale. With seven governments participating, on three continents, and a total of 24 people being exchanged, the exchange is a unique event in Russian, American and German history since the Cold War era.

Amid calls for a peace deal with Ukraine, the message that Russia is a reliable negotiating partner is a message the Kremlin wishes to promote. But a closer look at the exchange, suggests the oppositecomments Politico.

Originally, the exchange was to include the Alexei Navalny with Putin willing to swap him for Vadim Krashikov, an FSB operative who was jailed for life in Germany for killing a Chechen dissident. But as the talks were reportedly continuing, last December Navalny died mysteriously.

According to Navalny’s team, it was Putin who gave the go-ahead for Navalny’s assassination, assuming he would not stand in the way of Krashikov’s release. And he was right.

In exchanges there is a rule which says prisoner exchanges should mirror each other — soldier for soldier, spy for spy. But this week’s exchange overturned that unspoken rule. Russia on Thursday put journalists, politicians and a historian on a plane, among others. In return later that evening, Putin welcomed into his home spies, Russian cybercriminals and an assassin with proven ties to the Kremlin.

Instead of Moscow being “ashamed” of this exchange, Putin prepared a fiesta to welcome them. He personally greeted them as soon as they landed at the airport accompanied by senior leaders. He gave Krashikov a friendly hug and promised them that he would discuss the “future” with them soon.

In Putin’s Russia, patriots are rewarded with state awards and political positions, while traitors either die suddenly, as in Navalny’s case, or are imprisoned, or if they’re extremely lucky, a prisoner exchange that happens very rarely after years of negotiations and negotiations.

Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that with the prisoner exchange, the Kremlin is signaling to Russians that “they should not be afraid to commit crimes in the name of the regime, the Motherland will save them ».

However, with the exchange some cells are now empty, with Politico commenting that Kremlin critics who still enjoy their freedom will do well to be more careful.