Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming live from London

this is Owen Bennett Jones.

Back in the days of the Cold War prisoner swaps were generally thought of as the US and the Soviet

Union trading agents in Berlin, CIA for KGB.

So perhaps it's a sign of a more multi-polar world that today's exchange involved

24 people from six countries. The best-known releases, Wall Street Journal

reporter Evan Gerskovich convicted just two weeks ago of espionage

and Vadim Krasikov serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a former Chech-Chachang commander in a Berlin park.

The swaps all happened at an airport in Ankara and involved seven different planes.

Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia all involved. and I'm very good after you. Today we're bringing on Paul Evan also Vladimir. Three American

citizens and one American green cardholder. All four have been imprisoned

unjustly in Russia, Paul for nearly six years,

Vladimir since 2022, Evan since March of 2023,

and I'll sue since October of 2023.

Russian authorities arrested them, convicted them in show trials,

and sends them the long prison terms, with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever, none.

Well, our East Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford spoke to me about those released by Russia.

Evan Gerskovich is the sort of headline name and I think he's actually the catalyst really

to this entire massive prisoner swap because there was such shock when he was arrested

and accused of espionage. He was arrested just over. there was Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine when things became extremely

difficult, much more difficult even for reporters working in Russia and he was

accused of doing espionage simply for doing his job. His friends' campaign has always said those

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