Dissecting the Russia-West prisoner swap: Whose interests were served? Certainly not Ukraine's
Why did Putin strike a deal with Biden right now, giving Biden and Harris such a political boost?
Gershkovich was detained on March 29, 2023. Paul Whelan has been behind bars since December 2018. Krasikov has been doing time since 2020. It is obvious that Gershkovich was taken hostage in order to strengthen the negotiating position. As well as earlier basketball player Griner and Israeli Naama Issachar.
Navalny was killed almost a year after the beginning of talks about Krasikov's return to Russia. It is clear that the deal has been in the works for many months.
Moreover, as Jake Sullivan said at yesterday's press conference, Ukraine and the Ukrainian case did not exist at all in this process. This was a completely parallel activity of the White House and Biden personally and, in fact, Bill Burns.
But the implementation of the agreement happened exactly at a time when after a significant weakening of the positions of the Democrats and the crisis with the withdrawal of Biden from the race, Trump began to lose ground.
The paradox of the situation, in my opinion, is that only Biden could construct such an agreement for Putin. Under Trump, the Russians would not be able to get "their" spies from Germany, Slovenia, Norway, Poland and the USA at the same time.
Trump would not be able to convince Berlin that it is necessary to expand the framework and enter into an ethically complex value conflict over the release of a killer on a bicycle.
In fact, by talking about the fact that all European states are conducting politics in Washington's fairway, Putin is allegedly criticizing them, although another configuration would be much more difficult for him.
It turns out that Biden is a very convenient partner for Putin. Because, under Trump, such an agreement would seem almost impossible. And if Putin had postponed the finalization until the elections in the USA, who knows how the stars would have aligned.
In the end, everyone seems to have benefited from the deal.
Unless Ukraine is taken into account, of course.