The exchange of 24 prisoners between Russia and the West is of course great news — but it may be a tad too soon to open that second bottle of champagne.
The question that should be on everyone’s mind: Why would Russia’s dictatorial president agree to the deal? In short, what’s in it for him?
We may safely exclude any hint of humanitarian concern. Vladimir Putin is known for killing political opponents, not for saving them. He happily kills Chechens, Georgians, Ukrainians and Russians — in short, everyone who gets in the way of his imperial dreams.
It is also unpersuasive that he desperately wanted to save Vadim Krasikov — a security service assassin sentenced to life in Germany for killing a Georgian man who had fought for Chechnya — or seven other imprisoned Russian spies. Sure, getting them out of jail was nice, but Putin is no sentimentalist. He doesn’t shed tears over agents who get caught. And it’s highly unlikely that any of these eight failures will be rewarded with cushy jobs in the Putin regime.
If humanitarianism and sympathy are out of the running, what’s left? Three reasons.
For starters, Putin showed yet again that he can arrest, detain and kill with impunity. But he also showed that he can free with impunity. In other words, Putin is the law. What he wants, what he says, goes.
The message was intended for Russians, who know it anyway, and especially for those naive Westerners who still think that the war with Ukraine can be ended without full acceptance of Putin’s terms.
Putin also demonstrated that arresting Americans and other Westerners on trumped-up charges of espionage — or anything else for that matter — works like a charm. Put a few journalists in prison, starve them a bit and beat them for effect, and Washington will do just about anything to have them freed. Although many nations refuse to negotiate with terrorists, the massive prisoner exchange demonstrated clearly that the West is willing to negotiate with Russia’s terrorist-in-chief.
The refusal to negotiate rests on persuasive logic: If you let the terrorists know they can bargain successfully, you are simply encouraging them to engage in more terrorism in the future. According to this logic, Putin will continue imprisoning Americans and demanding concessions; perhaps the release of imprisoned Russian spies, perhaps changes in policy. The Americans — or Germans, Canadians, Israelis, Italians, etc. — need not be prominent journalists. Random tourists, backpacking students and the like will do.
Finally, far more important than getting eight failed spies back is that the exchange involved saying good riddance to two democratic activists imprisoned under atrocious conditions: Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin. The death of Alexei Navalny in prison backfired. Instead of demoralizing Russians, it galvanized them, with the result that tens of thousands braved security service cameras and attended Navalny’s funeral.
The death of Kara-Murza and Yashin, whether deliberate or through neglect, would have had a similar effect. Who needs three martyrs when one is already causing so much trouble? Better to get rid of them — in the time-honored manner of the KGB, which expelled dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974 — on the assumption that, as émigré activists, they will have little influence on events in Putin’s realm.
In sum, the festivities in the West today are likely to produce a hangover tomorrow. A failure on the battlefield, Putin outwitted the West at the negotiating table.
Proponents of peace negotiations with Putin may want to think twice about their ability to drive a harder bargain.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”