The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
West- Russia prisoner swap: How prisoners become geopolitical pawns
EVAN GERSHKOVICH, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, were among the 16 people — opposition politicians, journalists, and Putin critics — released by Moscow on Thursday in the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War. Russia received eight freed individuals in return, the most prominent being Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for murdering a Chechen dissident in Berlin in 2019.
Prisoners as leverage
Rival groups — whether they be tribes, nation states, or criminal gangs — have since times immemorial used prisoners as leverage against the enemy, to get something valuable in return.
In the pre- modern world, where prisoners of war ( Pows) or conquest were often either killed or reduced to slavery, some lucky ( rich) prisoners would be freed for monetary compensation. This is mentioned in Homer’s
Illiad, and was prevalent in medieval Europe, where captured knights commanded varying sums of money based on social status.
Multiple international treaties, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions, govern the treatment and exchange of Pows today. But there is no way to enforce these rules. This means that Pows remain pawns in international power politics. For instance, Russia has at times held back the release of Ukrainian Pows to flame domestic tensions against Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in Ukraine, Politico reported.
No set price of freedom
Things are slightly different with prisoner swaps like the one from last week. No written doctrine guides such exchanges.
Article 2 ( 1) of the United Nations Charter, establishes the “principle of the sovereign equality” of all UN members. This includes respecting laws of each country. While the fairness of a country’s legal system may be ( and often is) questioned, at a principle level, countries can punish foreigners for breaking the law. Thus, the price of a prisoner’s freedom varies on a case- to- case basis, depending on who the prisoner is, and what their captor can get in return for their release.
Gershkovich’s arrest in
March 2023 garnered global attention, with him being a journalist with the largest newspaper in the
US ( by print circulation,
2023). There was thus significant pressure on the Biden administration to bring him back.
In some cases, a prisoner holding sensitive information can expedite their release. The most famous such prisoner swap involved downed American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers and convicted KGB operative Rudolf Abel in 1962. This exchange was picturised in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 film Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks.
Some people — like Fredrick Pryor, the other American freed in the Powers- Abel swap — get plain lucky. Pryor was caught on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall in 1961. How he became a part of the Powers- Abel deal is unclear, but it is unlikely he would have been freed in just six months had it not been for the high- profile swap which he became a part of.
Prisoners also become diplomatic tools for neighbouring countries, like India- Pakistan, and IndiaSri Lanka. Fishermen who might have strayed into the other country’s waters are routinely arrested, and later freed in acts of goodwill.
No easy decision
Democracies are more likely to cave in to public pressure to bring citizens back, and often end up incurring massive costs for this.
In 2016, Nazanin Zaghari- Ratcliffe, a British- Iranian journalist and charity worker, was arrested in Tehran, and sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, campaigned tirelessly for her release, and pressure mounted on the Tory government to do something. The problem was that Iran wanted Britain to pay roughly 400 million pounds, in exchange for ZaghariRatcliffe’s freedom. This was money Iran’s Shah government had paid Britain for an order of more than 1,500 tanks and armoured vehicles in 1970, which was cancelled after the Revolution of 1979. Britain finally paid Iran back for the undelivered vehicles in 2022, to secure Zaghari- Ratcliffe’s release.
Experts argue that such hefty payments set a bad precedent, acting as encouragement for hostile regimes to arbitrarily take prisoners. In fact Zaghari- Ratcliffe’s arrest might have been prompted by the US paying Iran $ 400 million for undelivered military equipment in return for four IranianAmericans, just months before.
Such criticisms have been made about the recent swap as well; more specifically about the differing profiles of the people freed by the two sides. Russia mostly released jailed dissidents, while the West ended up freeing convicted fraudsters, criminals, and a hitman. This was also the case during the 2022 swap which freed US basketball player Britney Griner. Griner, who had been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Russia after being caught possessing cannabis oil, was swapped for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is nicknamed “merchant of death”.
Ultimately, the price of a prisoner’s freedom is not just limited to what is paid for them in the particular exchange. By paying a high price for their citizens’ release, a country increases the probability of others being unjustly imprisoned in the future by captors hoping to secure similar inducements.
But there are no easy answers to this dilemma. As US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN on Friday: “You’ve got to make these tough decisions… That’s what you have to do when you have people in harm’s way over there. It’s not easy”.