Negotiations between Moscow and Washington on a prisoner exchange ran for months. Now the Kremlin gave in – but with what concessions from the USA?
US President Joe Biden did not take the decision to exchange prisoners with Russia amid the Ukraine conflict lightly, according to the White House.
US government spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington it was a difficult decision for the president to shorten the prison sentence for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was convicted in the US. However, Yaroshenko has already served most of his sentence for a non-violent drug offense. “And our top priority here was the safe return of Trevor Reed, knowing that not only was he being held against his will for too long, but his medical condition required urgent treatment.”
unexpected development
Russia and the US had surprisingly carried out a long-discussed prisoner exchange. Russia released the American Reed and received Yaroshenko, who had been convicted in the USA. US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed the exchange at their summit in Geneva in June 2021. In view of the tense relations between the two countries, whose relationship has drastically deteriorated again as a result of the Ukraine war, the development came unexpectedly.
The United States had repeatedly demanded the release of 30-year-old Reed. He was sentenced to nine years in a prison camp in July 2020 – for allegedly assaulting police officers and resisting Russian state authority while drunk. The Russian pilot Yaroshenko was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States in 2010 for drug smuggling.
Psaki said the exchange between the two took place in the early hours of the morning US time in Turkey. The negotiations had gone on for months. Biden’s spokeswoman did not comment on why Moscow agreed now of all times. However, she emphasized that the negotiations were only about the release of Trevor Reed. When asked whether there had been any other concessions besides the dismissal of Yaroshenko by the US side, she said: “There were no other conditions that I was aware of.”
Source: Stern
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