A look at other prisoner exchanges between East and West

After years of confinement behind bars and high walls in American prisons and Russian penal colonies, some prisoners will suddenly find themselves free, an emotional moment that caps lengthy negotiations between Washington and Moscow.

Sometimes, freed prisoners see others who are also taking part in the exchange when they pass each other on the runway of an airport or, as in the Cold War, on the Glienicke Bridge that connected West Berlin to Potsdam. During the decades of prisoner exchanges, spies, journalists, drug and arms dealers, and even sportsmen have been among those released.

Thursday’s historic exchange was a particularly complex affair that involved months of negotiations between several countries before planes carried the large number of prisoners to freedom.

Previous exchanges include:

Britney Griner and Viktor Bout

The Dec. 9, 2022, trade of the WNBA star for a Russian arms dealer dubbed the “merchant of death” was notable and controversial for the magnitude of its disparities.

Griner had been arrested 10 months earlier upon arriving at a Moscow airport, when vape pens containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage. She was convicted of drug-related offences and sentenced to nine years in prison, a harsh sentence even in intolerant Russia.

Bout was arrested in 2008 during a US undercover operation in Thailand when he offered to sell surface-to-air missiles to men posing as Colombian rebels. He was extradited to the US and sentenced to 25 years in prison on various charges, including conspiring to murder US citizens.

Griner’s fame brought her case a lot of notoriety, and the Biden administration worked hard to secure her release, which took place at the Abu Dhabi airport. Critics said Washington had caved to political pressure by trading an arms dealer for a famous athlete.

Trevor Reed and Konstantin Yaroshenko

The exchange between Trevor Reed and Konstantin Yaroshenko was notable because it came against the backdrop of heightened tensions just two months after Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine.

Reed, a former US Marine, was arrested in 2019 in Moscow for allegedly assaulting a police officer while intoxicated. Reed denied the allegations, with then-US ambassador John Sullivan saying the case was so absurd that “even the judge laughed,” but Reed was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Yaroshenko, a pilot, was arrested in 2010 in Liberia for his role in a lucrative cocaine distribution scheme. He was extradited to the United States and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The exchange on April 7, 2022 took place at an airport in Türkiye.

The sleeping agents

In June 2010, U.S. officials arrested 10 Russians who were believed to be “sleeper agents”—those living under false identities with no specific spy missions, waiting to be activated when needed. Most of the information they gathered was apparently of little importance.

One exception was Anna Chapman, who attracted the attention of the tabloid press for her long red hair and model-like features.

The Russians were exchanged at Vienna airport the following month, in an unusual move, for four Russians imprisoned in their country, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent working for British intelligence. Skripal took up residence in the UK, where he and his daughter suffered near-fatal nerve agent poisoning eight years later, which authorities blamed on Russia.

Rudolf Abel and Francis Gary Powers

In the most spectacular exchange of the Cold War, Abel and Powers were exchanged on February 10, 1962, on the Glienicke Bridge, which connected US-occupied Berlin with East Germany.

Abel was the alias of British national William Fisher, who moved to the Soviet Union and joined its intelligence operations in the 1920s. Sent to the United States in 1948, he was arrested for espionage in 1957 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Powers piloted a high-altitude U-2 photo-reconnaissance plane that was shot down over central Russia in 1960. Because of the highly sensitive nature of the flight, which was to photograph military installations, Powers’s equipment included a coin coated with a neurotoxin to kill himself if discovered, but he did not use it.

The exchange on “Bridge of Spies,” as it was known, was portrayed in the 2015 film of the same name.

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