Prisoner exchange deal shows US and Russia can still agree - but it's bound to be a one-off

The sudden disappearance of high-profile prisoners. The mysterious manoeuvres of Russian military jets.

The exchange on the tarmac in Turkey. Dissidents, journalists, secret agents, smugglers, even an assassin.

It was real Cold War spy movie stuff.

But this was no fiction. It was real-life drama, and the result of a complex, delicate act of diplomacy more than a year in the making.

Two dozen prisoners, being traded between seven different countries.

It was no secret that Moscow and Washington had been in contact about a potential exchange involving Evan Gershkovich. But a deal this big was a complete surprise.

So why now? Almost certainly, it’s because of the US election.

For Joe Biden it’s about legacy – reframing the current narrative of a past-it president unable to continue, to the leader who got a deal out of Vladimir Putin to bring wrongfully detained Americans back home.

Russia’s leader wouldn’t have wanted to give President Biden an easy win here, but him dropping out of the race perhaps made it easier as it reduced a political dimension.

Perhaps more significant for Moscow, though, is the potential change in administration.

Could a new team in the White House, especially one led by Donald Trump, risk undoing everything that’s made this swap possible?

With so many layers, so many governments involved, this deal was stacked like a house of cards. If one falls, the whole thing collapses.

And this is not just a win for the White House, but the Kremlin too. Just look at the hero’s welcome laid on for Russia’s returnees – Mr Putin himself greeted them off the aircraft, at just before 11pm here.

It’s a sign of the value he places on his intelligence officers, and a signal they will not be abandoned.

It’s also an attempt to cast Russia’s prisoners in the same light as those who have headed west – as political prisoners wrongfully detained.

So despite all their differences, Russia and the West can still come to an agreement.

But don’t expect a rapprochement, or any reduction in hostilities in Ukraine. This historic deal is most likely a one-off.

“It’s precisely because there was not a linkage between this deal and the war in Ukraine, or the new START treaty, or our differences in the Middle East, that they got it done,” Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow, told me.

The West accuses Russia of engaging in hostage diplomacy, and one could argue that by doing a deal, the Kremlin will only be encouraged to try this again. After all, it didn’t release every US citizen currently in prison here.

Former school teacher Marc Fogel is serving a 14-year sentence for drug smuggling, after being detained at a Moscow airport in 2021 carrying 17 grams of marijuana, which he said was for medical reasons.

In a statement, his family said they were “heartbroken and outraged” that he was not included, calling it a “glaring injustice”.

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