When Russian security operative Vadim Krasikov returned to Moscow late on August 1 as part of a massive prisoner swap between Russia and the West, President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer himself, was on hand to greet him with a hug.
Krasikov had been serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination in broad daylight of former Chechen militant Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. The judge in the case described the killing as “state terrorism.”
“Russian state authorities ordered the accused to liquidate the victim,” presiding Judge Olaf Arnoldi said during Krasikov’s 2021 sentencing.
While the exchange of foreigners held without evidence and Russians imprisoned on politically motivated charges stemming from their opposition to authoritarianism and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was welcome news in the West, the deal is fraught with the possibility of a further ramping up of Russia’s covert aggression beyond its borders, analysts said.
“The fact that a lot of these people come back in prisoner swaps makes it easier for [Moscow] to recruit people to work as illegals abroad,” career U.S. Foreign Service officer William Courtney, now a fellow at the Rand Corporation think tank in Washington, told RFE/RL.
On February 13, 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former top official in the de facto independent Chechen state of the 1990s, was killed by a car bomb in the Qatari capital, Doha. Two men arrested in a Russian Embassy residence and identified as GRU military-intelligence operatives were sentenced to life in prison in June 2004, with the judge stating they had been dispatched to carry out the assassination by senior Russian leaders.
Under heavy pressure from Moscow, Qatar agreed in December 2004 to send the two men to serve their sentences in Moscow. They were given a hero’s welcome on their return to Russia. In 2005, Russian prison official Yury Kalinin told the BBC that the convicts were not being held in Russia and that the Qatari verdict was “irrelevant.”
Radiation And Ricin
Yandarbiyev’s assassination was the first high-profile case of its type under Putin. In November 2006, Russian agents assassinated former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Aleksandr Litvinenko with radioactive poison in London. In 2018, agents attempted to kill former Russian GRU officer Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. There have been numerous attacks on Chechen dissidents in several European countries. In 2020, Czech security officials accused Russia of sending an agent with ricin poison to kill the mayor of Prague and two other officials who had endorsed actions that angered Moscow.
An image of Aleksandr Litvinenko on display at the Museum of Espionage in Berlin
In 2006, Russia adopted a law empowering Putin to deploy the security services abroad to liquidate anyone Moscow deems an “extremist” or “terrorist.” In addition, Moscow has been accused of recruiting operatives for nonviolent espionage and influence activity – such as Anna Chapman and Maria Butina -- or to help the Russian military illegally purchase essential Western technology in avoidance of sanctions.
Far from mitigating such activity outside Russia, the August 1 prisoner swap could intensify it, analysts say.
In a post on X, King’s College London lecturer Alexander Clarkson wrote that Putin has signaled “that he will reward those within the Russian security services willing to double down on war against [the United States] and Europe.”
In an interview with the pro-Ukrainian YouTube channel Freedom, Russian political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky offered a similar assessment.
“Putin has solved one problem,” Piontkovsky said. “It was important for him to demonstrate to all of his murderers that I am behind you and, of course, that could expand Russia’s theoretical terrorist activity abroad.”
'Pay Any Price'
Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and expert on Russia’s security agencies and co-author of the book The New Nobility: The Restoration Of Russia’s Security State And The Enduring Legacy Of The KGB, told the media outlet Meduza that Putin was sending a signal to this crucial demographic.
“With a war going on, and even before that, Putin’s image among those inside the security agencies is extremely important,” Soldatov said. “In this case, he is showing that he stands up for his guys who are doing holy work, he is avenging their colleagues, and will pay any price to get them out of trouble.”
Prague-based Russian political analyst Dmitry Dubrovsky told RFE/RL’s Caucasus.Realities that “such exchanges could encourage Putin to carry out other political murders abroad.”
“The Kremlin’s killers won’t get their just punishments and can be exchanged after a few years for Russian civic and political activists,” he added. “This encourages the practice of state terrorism.”
Two accused Russian security operatives who were believed to have carried out the March 2018 attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, caught by a security camera at the Salisbury train station
Rand analyst Courtney described Russia’s intelligence operations in Europe as “growing,” adding that “Europeans are likely to be arresting Russian intelligence personnel in the future, so there could well be more swaps ahead.”
Moscow’s readiness to use its own citizens as pawns for such trades could foretell longer sentences and harsher conditions for dissenters in Russia.
“The message to Russian and foreign audiences is that the Kremlin has rescued ‘its’ people, whom, in line with its narrative, it never abandons,” Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG), was quoted as saying in an ICG release. “But the caution to domestic dissidents and foreign journalists, who continue to risk arrest if they run afoul of the Russian government, still stands.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote ominously on Telegram that some of those who were released from Russian custody in the August 1 swap should be concerned about the reach of Moscow’s security operations.
“Let the traitors feverishly pick out new names and hide themselves in witness-protection programs,” wrote Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Putin’s Security Council and is known for making threatening statements targeting the West.