In Russian political equation, 16 political prisoners = 8 spies and a killer

In the last few weeks, the situation in the vast field where the Global Game of Thrones plays out has changed, our analyst, Alexander Smukler of Montclair, says. (Mr. Smukler spent the first 31 years of his life in Moscow, leaving in 1991, just before the Soviet Union imploded. He’s spent much time in Russia and Ukraine since then, and he’s a lifelong student of that world.)

Don’t get him wrong — it hasn’t reverted to fields of roses. Problems abound — but some of them are slightly different problems.

Let’s begin with the release of the political prisoners Russia has held, in the complicated swap that President Biden orchestrated. Russian president and strongman Vladimir Putin “and the Russian regime took them as hostages a few years ago, in an attempt to exchange the Russian spies, hackers, and an assassin — that one, Vadim Krasikov, was held in a German prison” — Mr. Smukler said.

“Two of them were Jews,” he said. “Evan Gershkovich is a Russian-speaking American Jew, born in Princeton, with parents born in the Soviet Union. And his mother” — who, as a long story in the Wall Street Journal soon after the prisoners were released on August 2 reported, did not relent in her push to save her son — “obviously knows how to fight for freedom.

“She fought for her son.”

The other Jew is Vladimir Kara-Murza, “one of the top Russian political dissident leaders,” he said. “He is famous because he was one of the founders of the movement to have the Magnitsky Act passed.” That act went after the murderers of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured to death in a Russian prison for his pursuit of official corruption in the deeply corrupt country; it was “adopted by most of the parliaments in the Western world,” Mr. Smukler said. Mr. Kara-Murza was serving a 25-year sentence.

We will examine why Putin agreed to the deal that freed the prisoners, but first Mr. Smukler feels the moral need to consider the prisoners left behind. He focuses on Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old “who was, from what I’ve read, an absolutely genius pianist and musician.

“Just a few days before the release, Kushnir died in prison of a dry hunger strike,” refusing both food and water..

“To me, that is an amazing, unbelievably heroic attempt to fight against the war in Ukraine, and against Putin’s regime. He was not a politician. He was not a journalist, and he was not a lawyer. He was a musician.

“He was in prison in Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.” What’s that? It’s basically “Stalin’s joke, that still exists, and in schools there Yiddish is still part of the curriculum, street signs are in Yiddish, and the main train station is named after Sholem Aleichem. It’s very weird,” a kind of Russian Disneyland, but far creepier.

“There are about 77,000 people in the whole region, and sources say that there are between 7,000 to 12,000 Jews living there.

“The area is in the very Far East, on the border with China and the Jews there all have Israeli passports. They go there to conduct business with China.

“The area is a gold mine, a free economic zone with open borders, so import/export businesses are registered there.

Alexander Smukler“So the Jewish population there is substantial, but they don’t live there. They make money there.”

Why was Mr. Kushnir in Birobidzhan? Because the city has a good symphony. “His father, who died just a few months before he was sentenced, was a music teacher, and raised him as a genius pianist. He graduated from the Moscow conservatory, and was offered an exceptional position as a soloist with the Birobidzhan symphony. It’s a very good position — it gives concerts in China, and it has money to give its soloists substantial salaries.

“He wanted to be far away, and he thought that he was safe in the Far East.”

Why? He’s taken antiwar and anti-Putin positions, and the government had noticed. “So he went very far away, thinking that he could hide from them and survive, but in May he was arrested and probably brutally interrogated, but nobody knew about him. He wasn’t getting any coverage.

“He was thrown into prison because he made four short videos on YouTube against Putin and the war.

“How many thousands of people like him are in Russian prisons, and nobody knows about them?”

After enduring prison for a few months, Mr. Kushnir killed himself by refusing all food and all liquid. No bread. No water. It took five days and extraordinary willpower — and desperation — Mr. Smukler said.

That is what the 16 hostage-prisoners involved in the epic trade were able to leave behind.

Most of the eight people returned to Russia were in U.S. prisons, Mr. Smukler said, “but the key person, Vadim Krasikov, was in a German prison. “Putin had been trying to find an exchange for Krasikov for a long time, and the German government always said no.” Krasikov is a hit man, convicted and imprisoned for the in-full-view murder of a Chechen militant, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, in Germany. “He is a professional assassin who Russia sent to kill that Chechen rebel,” Mr. Smukler said.

Putin did not hide his interest in getting Krasikov back. “In his interview with Tucker Carlson,” the former Fox star who went to Russia for a fawning talk with Putin, “he said that the Chechen rebel, who was living comfortably in Germany with his family, was responsible for murdering hundreds of Russian soldiers.” Putin went on to describe Khangoshvili’s crimes; he doesn’t know if Putin is telling the truth, Mr. Smukler said, and he holds no brief for Chechen terrorists, but the interview made clear that Krasikov “was not a random killer hired by a local criminal gang. He is a trained assassin; Putin has been sending assassins from Russia into the heart of Europe to do clean, professional work.”

He mentioned the attempted assassination of the Skripals in England. In that case, the assassins failed, killing only entirely random British bystanders; in this case, Krasikov was caught. “We have no idea how many times, when people suddenly die, that it was successful,” Mr. Smukler said.

Pavel Kushnir“Krasikov is the central figure in this amazing prisoner exchange,” he continued.

The eight returned Russians — a group that included, in an amazing and humanly horrifying story straight out of the television show “The Americans,” two children who had no idea that their parents were Russian spies, or even that they were Russian at all, and now will have to come to terms with the knowledge that their parents had lied to them about everything all the time throughout their entire lives — disembarked in Moscow, and Putin met them.

He was there for Krasikov, whom he “met and hugged,” Mr. Smukler said, greeting him with a Russian phrase that is not formal but intimate, reserved for family and close friends. Putin has known Krasikov since he was the vice mayor in St. Petersburg. There are many rumors circulating on the internet about the relationship between the two men. Mr. Smukler can vouch for none of them, but one, he said, posits that Krasikov might have been responsible for the sudden death of the city’s mayor. “And I assume that if Putin wanted Krasikov out so badly, probably it means that Krasikov did a lot of work for Putin in the past,” he said.

So far, it seems that Krasikov did not talk when he was in German prison, but that could change at any time. “I understand that is why Putin is so anxious to get him out.”

It might seem surprising to American readers, who remember that former president Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for president, said that although Biden could never get Gershkovitch out, he, Trump, could get the reporter released by the second day of his second presidency. Given Putin’s apparent preference for Trump, the release could signal either that his desire to get Krasikov out as soon as possible was stronger than his desire to help Trump, or that he was starting to doubt Trump’s eventual electoral win — or, of course, both.

Another complication is that the deal was predicated on Biden’s relationships with the other heads of state, and particularly with Germany’s Chancellor Olof Scholz, who gained nothing from the deal but did it anyway. It is highly unlikely that Scholz would make a similar deal for Trump, with whom he has no relationship, Mr. Smukler said.

Doing it now also kept Kamala Harris from being able to claim much credit for the deal, and that too would be a benefit for Putin, Mr. Smukler said. Biden can appropriately take the credit — the deal is a diplomatic marvel — “but he’s a lame duck now,” Mr. Smukler said.

Still, he added, Krasikov’s future is not safe in Russia. At the least, he will disappear, quite possibly into a grave. If he is not killed, he will be given a new identity, but it’s more likely that he will suffer the same fate as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the half-Jewish oligarch and head of the Wagner Group, whose defiance of Putin led to his plane exploding in midair, just months after he returned to pay continued obeisance to the strongman.

This brings us back to the war in Ukraine.

Even a few weeks ago, Mr. Smukler was extremely pessimistic about Ukraine’s future. The Ukrainians are exhausted and running out of fighters, he said, and “the Russians are working day and night, slowly, slowly taking territory from the Ukrainians. They are moving towards major cities like Kramatorsk, and losing it would be a disaster for the Ukrainians. It’s not only a big industrial city but a major logistical hub for supporting a huge part of the front line.”

Although the Ukrainians just received the first F-16 aircraft from the Denmark, they are not allowed to use long-distance missiles. “The missiles that they are allowed to use, short- or middle-range missiles, will not change anything.

“So we can say that the today Ukrainian front lines are slowly deteriorating. And suddenly President Zelensky mentioned the possibility of peace negotiations with Russia. He said, importantly, that if a peace agreement is reached, he will not sign it until Ukrainians discuss its details and vote on it in a referendum.

Vladimir Kara-Murza (Mykola Swarnyk/Wikimedia Commons)“That is a completely new position. He is saying that he is ready to negotiate, and to conduct a referendum. It is already clear to everyone that there will be only one question. Ukraine will continue to exist, but the territories that Russia already occupies will be occupied by Russia forever. So the referendum will be on giving up territory for peace”

But. But. But.

Something has changed. Something is different in Russia.

“We have said that the Russian economy was flourishing, and Putin was able to modernize and increase military production at an incredible pace.

“But suddenly everyone in the world got a sign that Putin’s economy has begun choking. Sanctions have started to work.

“This week, we got a very strong indication that Putin is not going to be able to conduct an offensive operation.

“The head of the Russian central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, gave a press conference. And for the first time in three years, she spoke more or less openly about the Russian economy, and she gave experts reason to understand that the Russian economy has been seriously wounded by the sanctions.

“Nabiullina admitted that inflation is growing much faster than anticipated, and the Russian economy is suffering from the lack of investment. The bankruptcy rate is skyrocketing, and everything other than the military industry is suffering. Russian imports are dropping drastically because Chinese banks are delaying money transfer activities in an aggressive way. Russian companies are suffering.

“It is killing the Russian economy.”

Another huge problem that Nabiullina admitted is a major labor deficit. “Prices are going up, but industry has no workers. They have to increase salaries” — but they can’t.

“Nabiullina gave a picture of the coming months that is so dark and gloomy that experts have begun talking about how sanctions are working.

“Nabiullina is very brave,” Mr. Smukler added

Another huge and connected problem is the lack of manpower, he continued. Putin needs people to work the factories that supply military goods; he needs those same people, mainly able-bodied young men, to fight on the front lines in Ukraine.

“That means that even if Putin announces mobilization, he simply will not have enough manpower to throw on the front lines, because in that case he will suffer an enormous crisis in the military factories.

“One solution is to bring people from North Korea and Viet Nam. But it takes time to find them, bring them over, and train them. It hasn’t happened yet. And in order to break through the front lines and win a strategic advantage over Ukraine, Putin badly needs to mobilize 600,000 to 700,000 people. But he cannot do it.

“From the political view, he always was reluctant to do that. But now, the economy won’t let him.

“So in order to resolve this issue, he has to take three major steps. He has to open the border to foreign workers. He has to close the borders completely to Russians to prevent the ones he wants to mobilize from running away. And he has to announce martial law to start the mobilization.

“But closing the borders and starting mobilization are highly politically risky, and the head of the central bank says that if he is to throw all of those men on the frontlines, he will not be able to supply them.

“So the situation for the Ukrainians has changed completely.” Both Ukraine and Russia are running out of fighters, but Ukrainians are fighting for their own home.

Russia had been paying contracts to soldiers enlisting to fight, but now it’s raising the amounts it’s paying by a great deal. “It used to be 240,000 rubles, and now it’s 400,000,” Mr. Smukler said, and he reported that Putin has ordered local governments to supplement those federal funds.

Russia is losing 1,000 to 1,500 people to death or serious injury every day, Mr. Smukler said; it’s not clear how many Ukraine is losing, but defenders generally lose fewer people than the side that is on the offense, as Russia ia.

“Russia cannot continue to conduct the war like this for a long time,” Mr. Smukler said. “The head of the central bank is telling him directly that we cannot afford this war.

“I am now predicting that very soon we will see the war being wrapped up. We wil see intensive negotiations, because both sides now are willing to take steps to stop the war.

“One side is totally exhausted and cannot defend itself, and the other side cannot continue its offensive.

“So as soon as winter comes — and winter is coming — when the weather becomes cold and nasty, we will see that the Russians wil stop their offensive operations and will look to negotiation and agreement, and that will allow the hot stage of the war to end.

“The cold stage probably will continue.”

To continue with the chess analogy that Mr. Smukler first introduced months ago,“the global game of thrones is moving from the mittlespiel to the endspiel. The endgame.”

Massive problems will remain. Putin most likely will gain territory, but it’s territory that he’s demolished, in some places razed to the ground. It will take trillions of dollars to fix it. Parts that remain in Ukraine, too, are in smoldering ruins, and will take massive amounts of money to rebuild. So even if Putin wants to claim victory, it will be a Pyric one; he’s demolished his own economy and much of his part of eastern Europe after an illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign nation.

But “we will see that the whole global board game will move forward toward peace negotiations instead of further escalation,” Mr. Smukler concluded.