Putin rolls out red carpet for hackers, smugglers released in prisoner swap

The eight Russian citizens who returned home on Thursday as part of the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War were convicted on charges including murder and espionage and sent to prisons in Germany, Slovenia, Norway, Poland and the U.S.

But when President Vladimir Putin greeted them on the tarmac of a Moscow airport late on Thursday night, he embraced them on a red carpet flanked by an honor guard and thanked them for their “loyalty to the Motherland," saying Russia never stopped fighting for their release.

The VIP treatment, broadcast on state television and social media channels, reflects a key facet of Putin’s worldview: that Russians acting abroad in what he says are the interests of his state are true patriots who must be brought home no matter the cost. His campaign to secure their freedom, which played out in public and private comments by the Kremlin, could also indicate his willingness to detain more Westerners in Russia for use as bargaining chips in future exchanges.

Going the other way were 16 prisoners held in Russia and Belarus, including Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained last year and wrongly convicted on a false charge of espionage, and two other Americans, former Marine Paul Whelan and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who were met by President Biden and their families at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington in a comparatively low-key welcome. The others, a mix of German nationals and Russian opposition activists, were flown to an airport in Germany.

The Russians who returned home had very different profiles to the dissidents who landed in Germany. The most prized was Russian hit man and former intelligence officer Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of murdering a Kremlin foe in a Berlin park.

Putin had repeatedly demanded Krasikov’s return to Russia, calling him a patriot in contrast to traitors who, in March 2022, he said Russians “will simply spit out of their mouths like an insect." When Krasikov walked off the Russian Tupolev Tu-204 plane at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, Putin was waiting by the stairs to put his arm around him and exchange a brief greeting.

Securing the freedom of Krasikov, who told a guard in the German prison where he was serving a life sentence that “the Russian Federation will not leave me to rot in jail," sends a message that the Kremlin will continue to hunt down its enemies abroad and won’t abandon those caught in foreign countries while performing its dirty work.

In turn it will strengthen Putin’s position in the eyes of Russia’s military and intelligence services, who shore up his political system and are key to his hold on power. Acknowledging for the first time Krasikov’s killing of a Chechen insurgent in 2019, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the hit man previously served alongside employees of the Russian presidential guard.

“We’ll see new murders, new spies," said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned Putin critic. Those tasked by the Kremlin to operate in Europe, he said, “will understand that they need not fear for their own safety, because even if they get caught, Putin will bail them out."

Putin’s supporters and Russian state media lauded the latest swap as proof that the Russian president stands behind his words, hammering home another part of the Kremlin’s narrative around the exchange: that despite having waged a costly war in Ukraine for the past two and a half years, and being hit with wave after wave of Western sanctions, Russia has evaded isolation on the world stage and remains capable of striking deals with the countries it routinely calls its adversaries.

Also in the plane that touched down at Vnukovo airport with Krasikov were four undercover operatives for Russia’s military and foreign intelligence agencies. Two of them, Anna Dultseva and Artem Dultsev, were so-called “illegals" posing as Argentines while working in Slovenia.

In contrast to Western officials who have staunchly defended the innocence of Gershkovich and others freed from Russian jails, Moscow for the first time on Thursday made no secret about the biographies of some of those it brought back, acknowledging for the first time that Dultseva and Dultsev were Russian spies.

Peskov said that their two children only realized their parents were Russian when they took off from Turkey after the prisoner swap. When Putin greeted their children on the tarmac in Vnukovo, Peskov said, he greeted them in Spanish, saying buenas noches, or good evening.

“They are heroes for Putin," said Tatyana Stanovaya, a Kremlin-watcher and senior fellow for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a political think tank based in Berlin. “Putin wants to show that these people will be treated in the most honorable way. They will have everything they need."

Past precedent suggests they can be confident of living comfortably back home. Russians who have returned home in previous prisoner swaps have been placed on a pedestal, given seats in parliament and lucrative positions as presenters on state TV. Convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was swapped for Women’s basketball star Brittney Griner in December 2022, joined a pro-Kremlin political party after his release and became a staunch backer of Putin’s political agenda.

Maria Butina, a Russian who in 2018 pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to influence U.S. politics and was sentenced to 18 months in a U.S. prison, also became a lawmaker after her release. She launched a foundation aimed at bringing home Russians incarcerated abroad, and quickly emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Bout and Butina both chimed in following the prisoner swap on Thursday. Applauding the Russian government that once secured their own return home, they separately quoted a phrase Putin has often used in the past: “We don’t abandon our people."

From exile, the Russian opposition celebrated the release of many of its leading lights, including former close aides to Putin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in February before he himself could be released. Hundreds of Russian dissidents, who activists deem to be political detainees, remain in Russia’s prison system, some of them complaining of ailing health as they serve out long sentences in harsh and isolating conditions.

In a radio interview on Thursday, Peskov said he expected only those truly loyal to Russia to return home. The others, he said, should remain abroad where they are.

“Let the enemies stay there, and let the non-enemies return," he said.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com and Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com