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The path to last week’s historic multination prisoner exchange with Russia was made possible by the one man who died before it could be completed: Alexei Navalny.
The prospect of freeing the jailed Russian opposition leader was key to getting Germany to participate in the U.S.-brokered exchange. And Germany — or more particularly the Russian assassin sitting in German custody — was key to getting Russia to agree to release imprisoned Americans.
Throughout 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Joe Biden negotiated directly and through intermediaries to try to find a deal that was palatable on all sides. The desire to free Navalny kept the Germans at the negotiating table.
“With Navalny, we could envision a package deal,” a German official said.
A shared sense of the injustice of Navalny’s imprisonment helped unite Scholz and Biden as they navigated competing goals regarding both the hostages and Russia.
The story of how Biden and Scholz finally reached an understanding underscores the extent to which Navalny, in life and death, played a role in moving the agreement forward.
Navalny’s death in a Russian prison Feb. 16, 2024, forced a reckoning inside the American and German governments about just how much they were willing to give up, and likely eased negotiations with Russia.
“I often ask myself whether the Russians would have agreed to an exchange involving Navalny,” the German official said. “To be honest: I don’t think they would have.”
The National Security Council declined to comment.
This article is based on conversations with nearly two dozen officials, diplomats and aides in Washington and Berlin, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive negotiations. The conversations laid bare how even the most complex diplomatic relationships can lead to history-making deals through a combination of time, opportunity and circumstance.
The people POLITICO spoke to described how politics and national security concerns almost scuttled the efforts to formally negotiate with Russia on the swap. They detailed the inner workings of how two governments — in Washington and Berlin — grappled with the trade-offs that came with trying to make the deal happen even after Navalny died, including how to factor in their own citizens’ freedoms.
A common enemy
While on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on Aug. 20, 2020, Alexei Navalny started screaming.
He had been poisoned with a nerve agent known as Novichok, and he was in pain. It was the latest of multiple attempts on the life of the man seen as the leading opposition voice in Russia.
After landing in Omsk, he was transported to Germany for care at the urging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Scholz, who was finance minister, met with him in the hospital.
“I spoke with him at that time and got to know a courageous man who returned to Russia because he wanted to fight for democracy, freedom and the rule of law,” the chancellor would later tell journalists.
The day Navalny was poisoned, Biden was preparing to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. He didn’t mention the events unfolding in Russia, but weeks later he would make a promise to voters: “As president, I will do what [former President] Donald Trump refuses to do: work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes,” he said in a statement, calling Navalny’s poisoning a “brazen attempt” on his life.
Biden and Scholz, who have known each other for more than 10 years, don’t always see the world in the same way. Scholz started his political career as a member of the Social Democratic Party and reportedly once described NATO as “imperialist.” Biden, though a Democrat, has long been more conservative than Scholz.
The two countries have largely been on the same page about high-level issues like trying to counter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Africa. But behind the scenes, officials from both countries have been in a tug of war over how to arm Ukraine (Scholz has been slower to approve some weapons packages) and NATO spending (Biden has wanted Germany to spend more).
But Biden and Scholz agreed on the need to stop Russia’s imprisonment of journalists and dissidents. Navalny’s treatment by Russian President Vladimir Putin was emblematic of the kind of bad behavior that would only worsen if the Kremlin were to continue to get away with it.
For his party, Navalny decided that he needed to go back to Russia despite the risks. When he landed in Moscow in January 2021, he was immediately detained. Mass protests broke out across Russia.
Biden, worried about what might come next, warned Putin by phone in January 2021 that there would be severe consequences if Navalny were to die in Russian custody. The U.S. would later levy harsh sanctions on Russia. Several months later, Biden made his warning public in a press conference following the NATO summit.
More and more people stuck behind bars in Russia
Biden also had a bigger priority — freeing Americans unjustly imprisoned by Russia, including former U.S. Marines Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed.
But tensions with Russia had heightened. After the sanctions, Moscow began stopping more Westerners at airports, searching bags, in an effort to take additional prisoners. In February 2021, WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested in Russia.
By that fall, U.S. intelligence agencies had mounting evidence that Russia was actively planning to invade Ukraine, worrying officials that any potential prisoner swap would have to wait.
Scholz visited the White House on Feb. 2, 2022, and spoke with Biden about the Russian buildup on the border of Ukraine, Navalny and the potential for additional sanctions on Moscow. He met with Putin two weeks later, on Feb. 15, 2022.
Standing next to the Russian leader in a press conference in Moscow after the meeting, Scholz said: “A prison sentence in his case goes against legal standards of a state that abides by the rule of law.”
On Feb. 24, 2022, Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Even as fighting raged, Washington attempted a number of prisoner swaps with Russia, with some success. In April 2022, the Russians released Reed in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian drug smuggler. Then, in December 2022, the Biden administration made a tough call: It agreed to release Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer, in exchange for Griner.
Attempts to free others, including Whelan, floundered. Navalny, meanwhile, remained in prison, appearing in court in May 2022, saying Putin had started “a stupid war.” Russia sent him to a high-security penal colony in the northern part of the country. It appeared from his video hearings that his health was deteriorating.
The next year, Moscow arrested more Westerners, including multiple German citizens. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor at Radio Free Europe, was arrested and imprisoned a few months later.
Russia’s price
Six months after Biden took office, he spoke with Putin at a lakeside Geneva mansion and requested that the two countries maintain a line of communication through the CIA to discuss prisoner swaps.
To many inside the Biden administration, and even to outsiders who had a sense of how Putin operated, it was clear the Russian leader was holding out for one person: Vadim Krasikov.
Krasikov was an FSB colonel who shot and killed a Chechen dissident in 2019 in a Berlin park and was being held in Germany. He was close to Putin and known as one of Russia’s go-to hitmen.
In the fall of 2022, Putin indicated through various messages that he wanted Krasikov back and indicated Russia might be willing to give up Whelan in exchange.
It was welcome news to the U.S., but also presented a challenge. It would require the sign-off of one person: Scholz. There were already discussions underway — among Navalny’s supporters — and inside the U.S. and German governments in Washington and Berlin about multiple variations of prisoner swap deals, including ones that involved Krasikov for Navalny.
It wasn’t exactly a novel idea. To anyone who knew the internal workings of both countries’ political systems and Putin’s relationship with Krasikov, a trade that included Krasikov for Navalny seemed like a natural strategy.
“The Americans tried to get Krasikov for Whelan and Griner, and they got a ‘no,’” said investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who worked with U.S. officials to try and free Navalny. “That was predictable because the Germans will never, ever, ever hand over a convicted killer for an American because it’s political suicide in Germany.”
It’s unclear when the U.S. and Germany first formally discussed a potential release of Krasikov. There were multiple discussions inside and between governments at the same time — some formal, some informal.
Sullivan broached the idea with his German counterpart in 2022, but Scholz’s government refused. Giving up Krasikov, a murderer, was too big of an ask, the chancellor said.
A trade that freed Navalny was the only thing that sounded like it might get Scholz to even consider releasing Krasikov.
Scholz hadn’t brought up Navalny in any formal prisoner swap offer or discussion. But he was both personally fond of the Russian dissident, and freeing Navalny would be a massive political win for Scholz, and might be an acceptable trade-off for a release of Krasikov.
But it was far from clear that Russia would even consider releasing Navalny — who was managing to mobilize the Russian dissident community from behind bars.
And getting Krasikov released would be politically complicated for Scholz. The foreign ministry and certain elements of the legal system inside Germany were against it.
Scholz also wasn’t sure he was comfortable releasing a person who had so brutally murdered someone on German soil — at a children’s playground, no less.
Scholz started his political career as a left-wing member of the Social Democrat party. And past members of that political faction had in the 1970s vigorously argued against freeing prisoners in Germany who were members of a far-left Russian militant group. Scholz spoke at the funeral of one of those German politicians — former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt — and praised him for his firm stance on freeing “terrorists.”
For Washington, the deal Germany envisioned wasn’t desirable, either.
The U.S. wasn’t willing to engage in any formal deal that did not take into consideration its own citizens, a senior administration official said.
“There was just no way we were going to do that,” the official said. “This deal had to work for everyone.”
At the end of 2022, the U.S. discussed internally in the White House and State Department a broader proposal: If they could get Germany to agree to give up Krasikov, maybe Russia would greenlight the release of Navalny and the Americans.
Getting the Germans to yes
At the beginning of 2023, Ukraine was failing to hold off Russia’s advance in the eastern Ukrainian city of Soledar. Kyiv was desperate for new weapons that could help it keep control.
But after almost a year of fighting, European countries were trying to figure out a way to continue funding and supplying Ukraine even as its defense industrial bases were struggling to keep up and their economies were on tilt. The U.S. and Germany were involved in tense discussions over whether to send tanks to Ukraine.
Scholz was not in a good spot politically. His polls were low, and Germany’s economy was struggling. His government viewed the freeing of the murderer Krasikov as morally wrong and politically disastrous.
But Scholz didn’t shut the door to the idea. He viewed his relationship with the U.S., and Biden in particular, as crucial to his hold on power and his reputation inside NATO. And German authorities took particular care to protect Krasikov, moving him to a new prison for fear he would be killed in the prison in Berlin where he was being held. Several of his fellow inmates were Chechen.
Throughout 2023, the Germans contemplated the proposal, working to figure out how, exactly, they could help their American allies while also keeping Scholz stay afloat. Some of the ideas were about pure political cover — like getting an official request from the U.S. for the release of Krasikov.
During this time, CIA Director William Burns relayed a number of other potential deals to Russia to free the Americans. In November, the U.S. offered Russia several “illegals” who were detained in Slovenia. Moscow refused, and suggested trading Krasikov for Gershkovich, one of the U.S. officials said.
Sullivan stressed to his German counterpart Jens Plötner that the U.S. did not have the Russians that Putin wanted. It was Krasikov or no deal.
Germany said it needed more time to consider.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke to Biden just after the arrest of Gershovich, saying Germany was amenable, according to an account by The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens met with Grozev and discussed the Navalny supporters’ plan — Krasikov for Navalny — that they’d drawn up the year before.
Then, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people. The aftermath slowed talks, but in November 2023, Carstens met Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in Israel at a hotel and presented him with a hypothetical: Would Putin agree to trade Navalny for Krasikov?
It was an informal, unsanctioned effort to find out if the other key player in the deal — Russia — would even consider letting Navalny go. If the U.S. had a definitive yes from Moscow, maybe that would convince Germany.
Weeks later, Carstens and other U.S. officials heard back. Putin had agreed. It was far short of an official commitment, and some U.S. officials weren’t sure that Abromovich was even a dependable interlocutor for Putin. But it was something.
On Feb. 9, Scholz met Biden in the Oval Office to discuss the potential prisoner swap.
It was a tense meeting, another senior administration official said. Washington was on edge, worrying the window for getting Gershkovich and Whelan, and potentially others, out of prison was closing.
But, as Scholz had indicated over the phone to Biden days earlier, he’d considered the possibility of releasing Krasikov for months. The Germans were worried about a potential Trump presidency and wanted to move on a deal before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
“For you, I will do this,” Scholz told Biden. On the condition, of course, that Navalny was part of the deal.
Two days later, Washington sent a formal request to Berlin for the release of Krasikov.
‘It changed everything’
A week later, on Feb. 16, Navalny died in a remote Arctic penal colony.
“It changed everything,” one of the U.S. officials said. “No one knew what was going to happen with the deal.”
Navalny’s death shook the world, sending mourners in Russia out into the streets. And it shocked the White House, who’d held out hope for nearly two years that it would be able to bring Americans home from Russia. They’d also wanted to try and find away to free Navalny.
“On that day, honestly, to be frank with you, the team felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails in terms of our efforts to get Paul and Evan back home,” one of the U.S. officials said.
The U.S. hadn’t even had a chance to pull together the formal offer to Russia for the deal — one that would have included Navalny, the Americans and Krasikov.
“We were already in the early phase of operational coordination with the U.S. But before concrete talks with the Russian side took place, Navalny was dead,” the German official said.
Shortly after Navalny died, U.S. officials began getting word from Berlin that Germany was uncomfortable continuing to move ahead with a deal that did not include Navalny.
At the Munich Security Conference in Berlin in the days after Navalny’s death, U.S. officials started scrambling for another way to get the Americans out. Vice President Kamala Harris, briefed on the deal, met with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob.
His country had arrested and detained two Russian spies the U.S. wanted to offer up as part of the agreement. After Krasikov, the pair were seen as two of the most important prisoners that President Putin wanted back. The Slovenians said they would try to help, but the country’s legal system wouldn’t make their release easy.
And it was in no way clear that the Slovenian prisoners alone would be seen by Putin as enough to warrant a deal.
The new math
Navalny’s death forced the U.S. and Germany to try and find another way forward. In Berlin, it became a question of numbers — enough to justify Krasikov.
Sullivan started looking for another way to balance the scales. He instructed his staff to move forward with a plan to put a proposal together that included the Americans, several Germans and a number of Russians who were detained in various parts of Europe.
“We knew that for there to be any chance for Germany to put Krasikov on the table, it would have to be more than just the Americans coming out and Germans coming out. It would also have to involve a significant release, something that would justify and be worthy of the return of Krasikov to Russia,” Sullivan said in an interview. “We developed the concept that we would combine the Krasikov offer with these additional assets with some Russians in custody for the larger package that was ultimately put forward.”
Surprisingly, the Germans didn’t end negotiations once Navalny died. “We had to first deal with that heavy blow,” the German official said. “After a few weeks, however, we picked up the ball again.”
One factor in the Germans’ decision-making: They were convinced that Putin felt a Trump presidency would mean no deal, so this might be the best chance to get a large number of people out, according to another German official. They also were worried that Russia would continue to arrest Westerners in an attempt to get more leverage for Krasikov.
But Germany demanded, this time, that whatever form the agreement took, it would have to include multiple Germans held in Russia.
“Chancellory basically gave the order: We get a mega-deal for Krasikov or nothing,” one of the German officials said.
‘A kind of posthumous homage’
The complex multicountry trade still took months to put together.
Throughout June, U.S. intelligence officials met with their Russian counterparts in Middle Eastern countries. The German security services conducted their own talks.
In July, Sullivan, Blinken and their staff rushed to pull together the logistical details, including getting Slovenia to have its courts sign off on the release of the two spies. It took a call from Biden to Golob to cinch that part of the deal.
On Aug. 1, 24 people were released from prison from seven different countries. The U.S. brought home Gershkovich, Whelan and Kurmasheva as well as U.S. permanent resident Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition activist and columnist at The Washington Post.
The deal took dozens of officials from multiple different countries to pull off. But it was, in large part, Biden and Scholz, who found a way forward.
“It struck me that there are larger things that come out of this, in terms of our alliance, in terms of our values, and living them out,” Sullivan said. “I’m pretty overwhelmed.”
In the U.S., the news was celebrated. Journalists cheered Gershkovich’s release. Television crews waited on the tarmac for the detainees’ arrival, airing video of the Americans landing and embracing their families.
In Germany, the response was more mixed. Some political factions called out Scholz for releasing Krasikov — criticism the chancellor had anticipated and hoped to avoid.
In the end, Germany brought home five of its citizens who had been wrongfully detained or sentenced to death in Russia and Belarus.
“We prevailed against Russia across the board. Members of Navalny’s network were freed,” one of the German officials said. “It’s a kind of posthumous homage to Navalny.”
Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.
