Russia has countered the U.S. State Department’s offer of a prisoner swap for the release of WNBA player Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan. In addition to Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, also known as the “Merchant of Death,” Russia is also asking for Vadim Krasikov. Krasikov is a Russian military colonel convicted of murdering a Chechen fighter in 2019. He was sentenced to life in prison.
How does that sound? An arms dealer and a convicted murderer for a basketball player and a former Marine? Russia knows that the Biden administration is desperate to get Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan home after all of the recent publicity their cases have received in the press, both domestically and abroad. According to CNN, “Krasikov was convicted in December of murdering a former Chechen fighter, Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.” Krasikov is in prison in Germany so that presents a problem with the negotiations.
The request for Krasikov was not made through formal channels. It was made through the FSB backchannel. The FSB is a core part of the Russian security apparatus. Putin worked for its powerful predecessor, the KGB. The Biden administration, at first, did not view it as a legitimate counter to its offer. It sounds as though the Biden administration once again was caught flat-footed. After the counter-offer was reported by CNN, the administration described it as a “bad faith attempt to avoid the deal.”
But underscoring how determined the Biden administration has been to get Griner and Whelan back to the US, US officials did make quiet inquiries to the Germans about whether they might be willing to include Krasikov in the trade, a senior German government source told CNN. A US official characterized the outreach as a status check on Krasikov.
The conversations were never elevated to the top levels of the German government and including Krasikov in a potential trade has not been seriously considered, the German source said. But the previously unreported discussions reveal that Russian officials have at least somewhat engaged with the US’ proposal.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told CNN after this story was published that “holding two wrongfully detained Americans hostage for the release of a Russian assassin in a third country’s custody is not a serious counter-offer. It is a bad faith attempt to avoid the deal on the table that Russia should take.”
John Kirby, the former Defense Department spokesman, now the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications (we know him as Karine Jean-Pierre’s co-press secretary) also calls it a bad faith offer. The State Department is not saying much about the deal.
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“It’s just that they haven’t been willing to faithfully consider or even seriously consider the offer that we put forward. I would not say stalled. … We very much want to see Brittney and Paul come home to their families where they belong. They’re wrongfully detained there. And we’re just going to keep at that work,” Kirby said.
Asked for comment, a State Department official told CNN that “In order to preserve the best opportunity for a successful outcome, we’re not going to comment publicly on any speculation.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that the US had put “a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago” to facilitate Griner and Whelan’s release. He added that “our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday. “I pressed the Kremlin to accept the substantial proposal that we put forth on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner,” Blinken added. Blinken wants to look like a tough negotiator but Lavrov told him to go back to “quiet diplomacy”. It isn’t clear if Krasikov was discussed on the phone call. The Russians are making it clear that they want two prisoners in exchange for the two Americans. The release of Roman Seleznev, a convicted hacker currently serving a 27-year sentence in the US, has also been mentioned.
“I’m not sure that any additional activity, especially in the public sphere, will help a correct, balanced compromise and find a basis to alleviate the fate of a lot of our compatriots such as Viktor Bout, who has health problems, [or] such as Seleznev, and many others,” Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters earlier this month.
It won’t be a balanced compromise. A deal that exchanges a basketball player and a former Marine for an arms dealer and a convicted murderer or a convicted hacker is not a balanced exchange. The Biden administration is seen as weak on the national stage. Can you imagine any of this happening during the previous administration? One of Trump’s successes was his ability to get Americans released from being held overseas. He had an excellent record on that. Biden? Not so much. He and Blinken don’t seem to be particularly interested in the problems of Americans abroad until their stories show up in headlines. The families of Americans being detained overseas are going to have to understand that they have to get loud – speak up and relentlessly pursue their release with the State Department – in order to get the attention of Blinken and Biden.
Biden’s boasts of being an expert in foreign policy was always a joke. He has been historically wrong on every decision he has ever made. Even Bob Gates, a Republican who was defense secretary during Obama’s administration, wrote in his memoir that Biden had been wrong on foreign policy for decades. Biden’s execution of the withdrawal from Afghanistan showed how inept and incompetent he truly is. His ego allowed him to ignore the advice of career military officers and strategists and we see the results of Biden going it alone. Thirteen Americans lost their lives at the Kabul airport during the chaos of the final day of evacuation in a terrorist attack. The world is not afraid of Joe Biden. Americans are far less safe under his presidency.
We’ll see what happens with the prisoner swap for Griner and Whelan. Any way you look at it, it won’t be an equitable swap. Russia knows it has the upper hand in the negotiations.
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