This is the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
One of Vladimir Putin’s top enemies – who is a Russian-British citizen – will be freed from a penal colony in Siberia as part of a major exchange of political prisoners between Russia and the West.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was part of Russia’s beleaguered opposition, has been behind bars since April 2022, and suffered two near-fatal poisoning attempts in the years before his arrest.
He is among a group of prisoners set to finally be released by the Kremlin as part of what may be the biggest swap since the Cold War.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan are part of the exchange.
German national and Red Cross employee Rico Krieger and Russian opposition member Ilya Yashin are also included in the exchange.
Turkish television channel NTV reported that an exchange of 26 prisoners took place at Ankara airport.
Signs of a deal between Russia and Belarus on one side and the US, Germany and Slovenia on the other, multiplied today after several foreign prisoners disappeared from jail.
There has also been no official confirmation from Western governments believed to be participating in the operation.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap, involving the US and Russia, had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad which borders Poland and Lithuania before heading back to the Russian capital.
Pervy Otdel, an association that specialises in defending people in Russian cases of treason and espionage, said the flight could mean that an exchange had taken place on the Polish border.
Ivan Pavlov, a Russian human rights lawyer who founded Pervy Otdel, said the disappearance of so many people with similar profiles suggested the authorities were gathering them, probably in Moscow, for the exchange.
But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, when asked about reports of a looming major prisoner exchange, said: ‘I’m still not making any comments on this.’
The White House has been in extensive talks to achieve the release of Gershkovich and Whelan.
It is unclear if Britain has also been part of the ongoing negotiations to free Kara-Murza.
Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security jail for treason and ‘discrediting the military’ – the longest time ever given to a critic of the Kremlin.
A protégé of murdered Putin rival Boris Nemtsov, he was the vice-chairman of the Open Russia movement, a political organisation founded by businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in the country.
He caught the Kremlin’s eye after producing a seminal documentary about the fall of the USSR which highlighted how Putin had become president despite having been a loyal officer of the oppressive KGB spy force.
His platform grew as he penned a series of books, blog posts and press articles highlighting the repression of dissidents in Russia.
His wife Evgenia sat down with Metro.co.uk last year about the ongoing efforts to free her husband.
She said ‘publicity is her only weapon’ against Putin’s regime, adding that she is being pushed forward by ‘fury and indignation’.
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