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From Fox News: In the biggest prisoner swap with Moscow since the Cold War, the Biden administration on Thursday secured the liberation of 16 American and German nationals held prisoner in Russia and Belarus in exchange for the release of eight Russians.
The top of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s list was hit man Vadim Krasikov, who used the cover name Vadim Sokolov and was convicted by a German court for the 2019 assassination of a former Chechen commander near Berlin’s parliamentary building.
“Krasikov is a high-ranking colonel in the elite Spetsnaz unit of the FSB,” Rebekah Koffler, former DIA intelligence officer and author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital in reference to Russia’s intelligence agency the Federal Security Service (FSB).
“Krasikov is a very high-value asset who will be debriefed by the Russian security services on the operation, how he got apprehended, what he learned during the interrogations in Germany, and everything the Russians are interested in,” she explained. “These debriefings will help the Russians to make improvements in their operational tradecraft for Russian intelligence.”
It is also expected that Krasikov will be used to train “would-be assassins for future operations, making them even more lethal and difficult to detect and apprehend,” the report adds.
Who Russia Received:
Vadim Krasikov, an FSB operative and notorious assassin, was a key figure in the exchange. He’s known for several contract killings, including the assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin. /1 pic.twitter.com/VpTd8DoyyD
— Volodymyr Tretyak 🇺🇦 (@VolodyaTretyak) August 1, 2024
It has been reported that Putin wouldn’t agree to the prisoner swap deal at all until the Biden administration convinced Germany to release Krasikov.
While touting the deal on Thursday, Joe Biden praised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saying, “I particularly owe a great sense of gratitude to the chancellor.”
“The demands they were making to me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany,” he added. “But everybody stepped up. Poland stepped up, Slovenia stepped up, Turkey stepped up.”
US President Joe Biden says the prisoner swap required “significant concessions from Germany” and that he owes “a great sense of gratitude” to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. pic.twitter.com/tr5D5JmP7a
— DW Politics (@dw_politics) August 1, 2024
Putin hit man seen as Russia’s big prize in prison swap: ‘High-value asset’ https://t.co/EW8FevwdNX
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 1, 2024
🔴 Vadim Krasikov is the notorious pro-Putin hitman who gunned down a Chechen dissident while speeding through Berlin’s Tiergarten on a bicycle, earning him the moniker of the Berlin bicycle killer.
He was on the list of prisoners released in today’s swap.
Read here:… pic.twitter.com/AuS83sAAiZ
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 1, 2024
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