According to our interlocutor, the 5th Service of the FSB and the SVR are participating in the negotiations with the United States from Russia. Various options for exchanging the personalities needed by each country were discussed. From the very beginning, the USA named at least Paul Whelan and basketball player Brittney Greiner. However, in addition to Viktor Bout, Russia put forward a demand for the transfer of individuals who were not even detained in the United States. Either a person convicted in Germany appeared, or people hiding from Russian investigators appeared in other countries, for example, in Montenegro. And when we started talking about fugitives, then during the negotiations the US side brought up the person of Edward Snowden, who remained a US citizen and could well have been extradited from Russia. As a result, he was urgently granted Russian citizenship.
As a result, they have so far agreed on an exchange of Booth for Gainer. For Whelan, Russia wants either
Vadim Krasikov (Sokolov), convicted in Germany for the August 2019 murder of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in a Berlin park, or one of the very necessary fugitives.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
