The prisoner swap that never happened: How Navalny’s death also sealed the grim fate of journalist Evan Gershkovich

August 23, 2019. Russian secret agent Vladimir Krasikov follows his target on a bicycle as the man walks into Berlin’s Tiergarten park. Children play there and parents enjoy the sun. Near the swings, Krasikov takes a gun from his backpack and shoots his victim – a Chechen opposition leader – in the back.

Krasikov gets off his bike and, in front of the children, shoots the man twice more in the head. He cycles away but is arrested a little later by the German police. Krasikov is now serving a life sentence in Bavaria.

Our friend and colleague Evan Gershkovich, reporter for The Moscow Times and now for The Wall Street Journalcould not have imagined then that five years later his fate would be closely intertwined with that of Krasikov, the ‘bicycle killer’ who had previously carried out a liquidation in the same way.

Obsessed with his profession

This weekend marks exactly one year since Evan was taken from a restaurant by masked men during a report in Yekaterinburg. Once in Moscow, the authorities accused him of espionage. Evan is in pre-trial detention in the infamous Lefortovo prison. A concrete charge has still not been formulated.

Every three months – as recently as last week – the pre-trial detention is extended and this can continue indefinitely. There is no evidence of espionage. Gershkovich was one of the few American journalists still operating in Russia since the Russian attack on Ukraine.

He was obsessed with his profession. Just before his arrest, he was on holiday in Thailand with his best friend and our son Pjotr ​​Sauer. “Would you even go back?” Piotr asked Evan. Evan saw it as his journalistic duty to continue; every bit the reporter I had come to know The Moscow Times when he came to Moscow from America in 2017. The opposite path of his parents, who had moved to New Jersey during the Jewish emigration from Russia to New Jersey in the 1970s.

‘The merchant of death’

It soon became clear that the Kremlin and Putin themselves did not believe the espionage story. Evan had become a pawn in the geopolitical chess game of spy trading. Gershkovich is certainly not the first American to ‘assemble’ the Kremlin. Five Americans are now in custody, including former Marine Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years in a labor camp for ‘espionage’, and journalist Alsou Kurmasheva. She has been in custody since October.

There are also several Russians in American and European prisons, mostly for cyber and/or extortion crimes. Enough ‘material’ to exchange prisoners back and forth.

The problem is that Putin has no interest in bringing back ‘ordinary’ Russians; he only wants his ‘fellow’ FSB secret agents back. High on his list was arms dealer Viktor Bout, also known as ‘The merchant of death’. Bout provided regimes in Africa and elsewhere with war instruments at the behest of the Kremlin. he was traded two years ago for American basketball star Brittney Griner. She played in the Russian league and was caught at customs in Moscow with a marijuana inhaler that she was using for asthma.

Trade for Navalny

And now there is only one man left whom Putin insists on bringing back: Vladimir Krasikov, the FSB assassin from Berlin. A month ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Washington for a hastily scheduled meeting with President Biden. Ukraine and Gaza were of course topics of discussion, but the last item on the agenda concerned a prisoner exchange.

According to a reconstruction of The Wall Street Journal the idea came from Christo Grozev, a fellow fighter of Alexei Navalny. Grozev is said to have approached Hillary Clinton with the idea of ​​exchanging Vladimir Krasikov for Navalny, Paul Whelan and Evan.

The American officials thought that was a good idea. But Krasikov was in a German prison and without Germany’s cooperation there was no exchange. Whether Chancellor Scholz wanted to participate in this plan? There would have been little enthusiasm on the German side – you don’t just let an FSB assassin who kills someone in a Berlin park in broad daylight – but the Navalny/Gershkovich combination seemed to appeal.

Fuck the fuck

In Russia, Putin had now given signals that as far as he was concerned, Evan could be exchanged. American journalist Tucker Carlson – who recorded a controversial interview with Putin in Moscow – initially hoped to take Gershkovich back to America. He reported that Putin would feel “embarrassed” about Evan’s arrest. The Russian side was contacted via Roman Abramovich, the former Chelsea owner with access to Putin, and the signals seemed to be green there too.

Everyone involved held their breath. Yulia Navalnaya thought she would be able to embrace her husband again. Until six days later the terrible news came that Navalny had died in his prison camp at the North Pole.

“Such things happen,” said Putin cynically, adding that he would have liked to exchange Navalny (Finally Putin pronounced his name). We may never know exactly what happened in those six days and how Navalny met his end. But it is certain that Evan Gershkovich, who had no knowledge of all the negotiations in his cell, is really screwed.

Germany does not consider him ‘tough’ enough to exchange for FSB member Krasikov and will think twice before entering into new negotiations after the failure of the failed Navalny/Evan exchange. Biden – despite promises that he will do everything to get Evan released – simply has no American ‘bargain’.

Best years of his life

So for the time being, Evan spends his days together with another prisoner in a cramped cell in Lefortovo, where the light is on day and night and he only comes out for fifteen minutes a day in a walled courtyard in a rhythm – as he describes in his letters – of breakfast , cleaning, exercises, reading, meditation, reading again, watching stupid programs on Russian TV, reading again and sleeping.

It is difficult to comprehend, but Evan would prefer that his ‘trial’ take place as quickly as possible – he faces at least fifteen years – so that he can be sent to a prison camp. There he ends up in a barracks with other prisoners and has at least some social contact again.

Evan is now 32 years old, he spends the best years of his life completely wrongly in a cell. He can be released if Germany and America join forces and exchange him (and other American prisoners) for Vladimir Krasikov. Krasikov, meanwhile, has a much easier time in his Bavarian prison on the Danube, where he spends many hours walking around the prison garden and reading books about the exploits of Russian spies.

Derk Sauer is publisher of The Moscow Times and columnist at Het Parool. He is also the founder of the Russian newspaper Vedomosti and former publisher of RBK Gazeta.