In a throwback to the dark days of the Cold War, a plane landed late at night in Turkey to offload prisoners from Russia to be whisked off to an US Air Force plane for the journey to a military base in Washington.
In what was seen as the briefest sign of a thaw in some of the most adversarial ties in history since the days of the Soviet Union with the US, as many as 24 people were exchanged between Moscow and the West.
Even so, it is being said that not too much is to be read into this historic prisoner exchange which freed the likes of a Wall Street Journal reporter and a former US Marine. This is being seen as a one-off exchange that followed months of delicate negotiations involving Slovenia, Germany, Norway, Poland and Turkey with the US President Joe Biden.
Mr Biden, who has withdrawn from the presidential race, exulted in a rare diplomatic triumph at a time when a war is being fought by Russia in Europe even as the US and the West have ranged behind Ukraine against Mr Vladimir Putin.
It is said Mr Biden took interest in the final negotiations the same evening that he was grappling with the idea of giving up his run for the White House. Of course, Mr Donald Trump derided the whole swap deal saying had he been President Mr Putin would have released US prisoners without an exchange.
Among those released is also convicted political assassin Vadim Krasikov who was working for Russia’s state security service when he disposed of a Chechen rebel in Berlin five years ago. But the reason such a compromise was being struck now was reportedly the capture in Slovenia of two Russian sleeper agents who Mr Putin wanted brought back home to safety.
The release of 16 prisoners from the horrendous conditions of Russian jails comes as a boon for a couple of American journalists who may have had little to do with spying, five Germans and for seven Russian citizens, too, who were political prisoners in their own country.
A kind of “Mission Impossible” has achieved, but it is a pity the breakthrough may not lead to any greater defrosting in US-Russia ties, which the world sorely needs when Mr Biden’s agenda, as he seeks a spectacular ending to his four years in the White House that began in Covid-hit times, would be to negotiate an end to two draining wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
