Watchdog

Russia's Interior Ministry has added two more associates of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to the federal wanted list.

The names of Georgy Alburov and Vyacheslav Gimadi appeared on the ministry’s registry on April 26, less than two weeks after another member of Navalny's team, Ruslan Shaveddinov, was placed on the list.

The ministry did not give a reason for adding the activists to the registry, noting only that they were there "due to a criminal case."

Thousands of protesters have been detained for demonstrating in support of the Kremlin critic since he returned from Germany in January 2021 after convalescing following a poison attack that almost killed him. Navalny was arrested upon arrival at the airport and has been behind bars since.

More than half of Navalny's associates and political coordinators, including Alburov and Shaveddinov, have left Russia or been arrested for their activism, with some placed on wanted lists as "terrorists" or "extremists" as the Kremlin cracks down on all forms of dissent in the country.

Journalists who probed the circumstances of Navalny's poisoning and cited his corruption investigations have been branded a "foreign agents."

Last year, the Moscow City Court declared all organizations linked to Navalny as extremist, preventing people associated with Navalny and his network of regional offices across Russia from seeking public office.

The ruling on his organizations also carries possible lengthy prison terms for activists who have worked with them.

Navalny was handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole. His conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.

Navalny has blamed Putin for his poisoning with a Novichok-style chemical substance. The Kremlin has denied any role in the attack.

Last month, a court sentenced Navalny to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of embezzlement and contempt charges that Navalny and his supporters also rejected as politically motivated.

msh/ac

Washington and Moscow have completed a prisoner swap involving Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, jailed on U.S. drug-smuggling charges, and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, jailed in Russia on charges of assaulting police, despite deteriorating diplomatic relations over the Kremlin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on April 27 that the swap was the product of "a lengthy negotiation process," with Reed leaving the country from Moscow's Vnukovo Airport.

Minutes after the announcement, U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed that Reed was on his way home, and "is free from Russian detention."

The prisoner swap marks the highest-profile release during the Biden administration of an American deemed wrongly detained abroad and comes as Washington and its Western allies have hit Russia with crippling economic and financial sanctions that have left relations at post-Cold War lows.

"The negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly," Biden said.

He did not elaborate, but added that Washington "won't stop" until other Americans being held in Russia, including another former U.S. Marine, Paul Whelan, are also freed.

Reed, a 30-year-old from Texas, was jailed in 2020 after being convicted of assaulting two Russian police officers in 2019. Reed denied the allegations, while the United States questioned the fairness of the proceedings, calling his trial a "theater of the absurd."

Reed's lawyer, Sergei Nikitenkov, said the exchange was not based on a clemency move, adding that his client continued to consider himself not guilty.

Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and rendered to the United States. The following year, he was convicted of smuggling cocaine in his planes to destinations in South America, Africa, and Europe and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Yaroshenko's lawyer, Aleksei Tarasov, said that the exchange was conducted through an unspecified third country.

Reed's father told CNN that his son was moved to a Moscow prison this week and then flown to Turkey, where the swap took place.

"The American plane pulled up next to the Russian plane and they walked both prisoners across at the same time, like you see in the movies," Joey Reed said.

Reed served his sentence in Mordovia, a region about 350 kilometers east of Moscow with a long reputation for being the location of Russia's toughest prisons, including Soviet-era labor camps for political prisoners.

In recent months, Reed went on two hunger strikes to protest prison conditions, including being placed in in solitary confinement.

His parents had voiced concern that he may have contracted tuberculosis and that his health has been fragile.

Russia had sought Yaroshenko's return for years. He has denied any wrongdoing and called the case against him "fabricated."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the swap and said the United States was "committed to securing the freedom of all U.S. nationals wrongfully detained abroad."

Several high-profile Americans remain behind bars in Russia, including Whelan, who was sentenced by a court in Moscow to 16 years in prison in May 2020 on espionage charges. U.S. officials have called that ruling a "mockery of justice."

Whelan is also serving his sentence in a separate prison facility in Mordovia.

Another American whose detention by Russian authorities has drawn criticism is women's basketball star Brittney Griner, who was arrested in February at a Moscow airport after authorities said a scan of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing hash oil.

Griner, who played for a Russian professional basketball team, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted on drug charges. She's pleaded innocent.

With reporting by Interfax, USA Today, and TASS