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In Russia, they like to convict individuals before they free them.

So certainly, as journalists we were watching her case, but when they were both convicted

Alsu and Evan that was a signal I think that okay something may be about to

break here. It's the Law Fair podcast I'm Benjamin Wittis editor-in-chief

of Law Fair with Shane Harris of the Washington

Post and E Eugenia Lostri of Lawfair.

I do think that Russia needed to come up with more people that it was going to get back

so it didn't just look like trading Krasikoff for these really high-value folks, but I do think at the end it's possible that Putin really

just wanted the murderer. We're talking today of course about the giant

prisoner swap, 16 people freed by the Russians, and a bunch sent back to Russia,

it's a heck of a story. All right, Shane, I want to start with how this happened.

Nobody was expecting a giant prisoner exchange.

Evan Gerskovic had only very recently been convicted,

and there was some talk of would he be exchanged for a Russian in German custody for a murder in Berlin.

But I did not hear anybody talking about a multi-country, multi-person exchange of political dissidents and spies and cyber criminals all in of all places

Ankara so how the heck did this come to be?

Well, I can take the long version or the short version.

Essentially what happened here is I would go back to as a good starting point this past February when you will recall that as world leaders were gathering at the Munich Security Conference came this very shocking news that Alexei Navalny, the leading

...