Exchange Fund

Multi-layered exchange.

Yesterday's multi-layered exchange, in which a dozen states participated, is completely unique. It was not an exchange of spies, an exchange of prisoners of war, or an exchange of Luis Corvalán for Vladimir Bukovsky. It was an exchange of spies, killers, scammers for dissidents. And for the most part – on other people's dissidents.

The West was able to pull not only its citizens out of Russian prisons. It is clear that Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan are Americans, and the United States was ready to pay any price for their release. We all remember that the United States a year and a half ago gave Russia the "merchant of death" Viktor Bout to release the basketball player Brittney Griner, who was serving a sentence in Russia. Victor Bout, whom they had been hunting since the late nineties, and then developed a complex, multi-pass, expensive operation to lure him out of Russia. Years of hard work, which made it possible to arrest and convict a man who supplied weapons to the ugliest regimes on the planet, America simply threw him in the trash to free its citizens. So everything was clear with Whelan and Gershkovich: they would be fought for. As for the others...

Well, the journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, in addition to Russian, has American citizenship. Vladimir Kara-Murza is a UK citizen. Kevin Leek and Dieter Voronin have German citizenship. But artist Sasha Skochilenko, politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov, activists Lilia Chanysheva and Vadim Ostanin are Russians without any other citizenship. Just political prisoners. Russia's internal affairs. Foreign states fought for their release. Killer Vadim Krasikov, who killed former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin by order of the Kremlin and received a life sentence in Germany, was released from prison and sent to Russia. This in order to release the naive artist Skochilenko, who replaced the labels in the St. Petersburg supermarket with anti-war leaflets, and several other people together with their citizens? It really was a unique exchange.

I can imagine how many good people yesterday again felt the hope that their friends, relatives, like-minded people would be able to go free in the same way and would not serve their gigantic sentences. I also experienced an instant acute sense of euphoria – well, here it is, it has begun, it has shifted! But after seconds of euphoria, a bitter understanding came that Russian killers and spies, sent to Europe on an industrial scale, can continue to feel calm: if they are arrested and imprisoned, a wizard will soon fly in a blue helicopter and remove the handcuffs from them. All you need is an inexhaustible supply of hostages for exchange. Exchange fund. Taking hostages is easy. There will always be an American or German journalist, missionary, researcher in huge Russia, who can be imprisoned and wait for an offer to be exchanged for some ghoul that kills people in the middle of Europe. Also, you can imprison a bunch of your own people and put them on the political darknet for bidding: "Who wants an artist, young and naive? Who wants a schoolchild in the case of treason? Who needs a journalist who will die in prison?"

They will be exchanged. Then new ones. The main thing is that the flow of hostages does not end. However, even if Putin does not have enough human units for the Hamburg account, Lukashenka will come to help him. Like a piano in the bushes, he will find a frightened German in his dungeons. He will bring this German on a platter, like a respectable guest, to the master's table: take him, he is yours! He accept it. He will pay back later – with money, support, gas. Belarusian political prisoners will remain in their cages. But with deep concern and the hundredth call of the civilized world to release them immediately.

When the Chilean communist Luis Corvalán was exchanged for the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet people wrote a cheerful ditty: "They exchanged a hooligan for Luis Corvalan. Where to find such a slut to exchange for Brezhnev's but?" So now I'm thinking: where to find it really?

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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