Russian journalist Ivan Safronov and opposition politician Alexey Gorinov were originally going to be part of Thursday’s unprecedented East-West prisoner exchange, investigative journalist Christo Grozev has told the BBC.
A highly respected investigator for Bellingcat and The Insider who was involved in the negotiations with the FSB that led to 16 political prisoners being freed from Russian jails last week, Grozev said that Ivan Safronov, a journalist serving a 22-year prison sentence for treason, had been on the original exchange list.
Safronov, who previously worked for two of Russia’s best known newspapers, Vedomosti and Kommersant, was arrested in 2020 and charged with sharing classified information with the Czech intelligence services. He was found guilty despite the information he was accused of sharing being publicly available, with many believing the real reason for his long sentence was his 2019 reporting on Russia’s sale of fighter jets to Egypt.
The Russian side proposed replacing Safronov with political scientist Demuri Voronin, a dual German/Russian citizen who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in the same case, Grozev said. The fact that the German side “didn’t know about the existence” of Safronov before the negotiations was conclusive evidence that Voronin was not a spy, Grozev added..
Grozev also said that former Moscow local politician Alexey Gorinov, the former head of the Navalny LIVE Youtube channel Daniel Kholodny, and three imprisoned lawyers who represented the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny, were originally part of the carefully brokered deal, though exactly why they weren’t exchanged in the end, Grozev did not reveal.
However, Grozev did say that freed opposition politician Ilya Yashin had not originally been slated for exchange, largely due to Yashin’s own refusal to leave Russia under any circumstances. In the end, the Russian side likely insisted on Yashin’s inclusion in the 24-person exchange, Grozev said.
