‘These are just names’ The Kremlin wants state media to spin Russia’s biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War as no big deal

The Putin administration has dashed off a brief memo advising Russian state-controlled and pro-Kremlin media on how to cover today’s historic prisoner swap. Though less detailed than the Kremlin’s usual media guidelines, the memo advises downplaying the importance of the exchange and depicting the political prisoners Russia handed over to the West as “superfluous” criminals. The Russian citizens returned to Russia, meanwhile, should be depicted as patriots who “worked for the Motherland.” Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev reports.

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The Putin administration’s memo on how Russian state-controlled and pro-Kremlin media should cover Russia’s biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War is less detailed than its previous media guidelines. It mainly recommends listing the names of the political prisoners Russia released alongside their convictions — which range from “discrediting” the Russian army to “espionage” and “high treason” — and prison sentences.

As Meduza reported previously, the Kremlin issued similar media recommendations in February, after Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny died suddenly in prison.

A source from one major Russian online publication interpreted the instructions as the Putin administration’s way of framing the political prisoners handed over to Western countries as “traitors and saboteurs” or, as he put it, the West’s “own agents.” “They’re saying nothing bad has happened — we got rid of superfluous [people],” he told Meduza. A political commentator for state-controlled and pro-Kremlin media gave the same interpretation.

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The Russian citizens released and returned from the West, meanwhile, should be depicted as people who “worked for the Motherland,” the memo says. In the case of Vadim Krasikov, for example, it suggests highlighting that he “eliminated an enemy field commander.” (An ex-FSB officer, Krasikov was serving a life sentence in Germany for assassinating former Chechen field commander and Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in broad daylight in a central Berlin park.) 

Two Meduza sources close to the Putin administration believe that while the exchange is important to the country’s top leadership and Russians who sympathize with “non-systemic opposition figures,” it’s not important for “the domestic political situation in Russia on the whole.” “The majority of [Russian] citizens don’t care who was exchanged. They have little knowledge of opposition figures and political prisoners, or none at all — [for them,] these are just names. The same goes for those who were [returned to Russia],” said a source in the Putin administration.

“Although Krasikov is important to the president. They’re people from the same corporation, one might say,” the source added, referring to the FSB. 

Both this person and another source close to the Putin administration’s political bloc were confident that state-controlled and pro-Kremlin media will “completely forget” about the exchange in a matter of days, since it’s “not on their priority list” now. 

However, one of Meduza’s sources didn’t rule out the possibility of the Kremlin wanting to turn Krasikov into a public figure, as it has with other high-profile Russian citizens released from U.S. custody — namely, Russian agent turned lawmaker Maria Butina and arms dealer Viktor Bout. However, Putin hasn’t handed this task to his domestic policy team as of yet.