Eight Russian citizens, plus two children, returned to Russia on Thursday evening as part of a prisoner exchange conducted between Russia and the West, the largest since the end of the Cold War.
In exchange for the eight individuals, Moscow agreed to release a double number of prisoners, American citizens or Russian dissidents, serving various prison sentences.
According to The Guardian, the eight prisoners who returned to Russia are:
Vadim Krasikov: Vladimir Putin has long indicated Krasikov as his number one request in any prisoner exchange. He was arrested in 2019 after fatally shooting Chechen exile Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in broad daylight in a park in Berlin.
Artem Duldeev and Anna Duldeeva: The two were Russian spies undercover, claiming to be a married Argentine couple. They lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with their two children, where it is believed they carried out tasks for Russian intelligence services across Europe.
Mikhail Mikushin: He was arrested in the northern Norwegian city of Tromsø, where he worked as a researcher at a university, ironically employed for assessing hybrid security threats.
Vladislav Kliushin: A Russian businessman with Kremlin ties, Kliushin was sentenced to nine years in prison in the U.S. for his role in a $90 million insider trading scheme involving the hacking of confidential earnings information from multiple companies.
Roman Seleznyov: The son of a Russian Duma deputy, Seleznyov was sentenced to 27 years in prison, the longest ever sentence for computer hacking in the U.S.
Vadim Konoshchenok: He was arrested for a scheme to export American technology intended for use by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
Pablo González (Pavel Rubtsov): Holding dual Spanish and Russian citizenship, González is a journalist who worked for many years for Spanish publications, often in Russia and Ukraine. He was arrested in Poland near the Ukrainian border in March 2022 and had been held in a Polish prison since then, accused of espionage in favor of Moscow.