Turkish intelligence announced on Thursday that it was coordinating an extensive prisoner exchange, amid signs of a major swap between Russia and Belarus on one side and the United States, Germany and Slovenia on the other.
“A (prisoner) exchange operation will take place today under the coordination of our organization,” the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.
“Our organization has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period.”
Both the Kremlin and the White House declined to comment when asked about a possible exchange.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, before heading back to the Russian capital.
A Reuters reporter also saw a Russian government plane in the Turkish capital Ankara.
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A number of U.S. nationals are being held in Russian prisons, including jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, have suddenly disappeared from view, according to their lawyers. At least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly moved from their prisons in recent days.
A lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place.”
RIA also reported that four Russians jailed in the United States had disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include opposition politician Ilya Yashin, human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
In the West, the dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully detained political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
Among those Moscow has signaled it wants is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving life in Germany for murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using fake identities, and said they would be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.
Reuters could not independently confirm that.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Filipp Lebedev and Lucy Papachristou in London; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Ros Russell and Jon Boyle)