Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Beijing, China, 30 January 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE / THOMAS PETER / POOL
The Kremlin would “definitely be prepared to consider” another prisoner exchange with the US after president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told US broadcaster NBC on Tuesday.
While stressing that he did not want to “pre-empt anything” as such deals required a “multiphased or multistep approach on both sides”, Ryabkov said a new prisoner swap could help improve relations between Russia and the US and would represent “a healthy step forward, especially at the beginning of the next administration”.
Ryabkov did not provide any further details of the timeline for a potential future prisoner exchange or names those who might be included.
However, in November, the lawyer of Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-US dual citizen currently serving a 12-year prison sentence in Russia for donating €50 to Ukraine, confirmed that the US and Russia were negotiating a second major prisoner swap expected to take place in February.
That confirmation followed a report by pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Mash, which said that Russia’s Foreign Ministry had compiled a list of “70 people that the US government has accused of espionage and sanctions evasion”, while the US sought to exchange Karelina; US national Joseph Tater, who is currently imprisoned in Russia for assaulting a police officer; and US soldier Gordon Black, who was sentenced to three years in prison in June for theft and making death threats to his Russian girlfriend.
August saw the largest-ever prisoner swap between Russia and the West, in which 16 mainly political prisoners were released from Russian jails in exchange for eight Russian citizens serving prison sentences in the US, Germany, Norway and Slovenia.
On Tuesday, it emerged that Vladimir Putin had secretly awarded Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a married couple who returned to Russia as part of the exchange in August after working as sleeper agents in Slovenia for years, with the Order of Courage, a state award given to citizens who have shown “selflessness, courage and bravery”.
