❗️Artem and Anna Dultsev, Pavel Rubtsov, Vadim Konashchenko, Mikhail Mikushin, and Roman Seleznev, who were imprisoned in NATO countries, have returned to Russia, a source in one of the competent Russian agencies reported.

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Who is returning to Russia as part of the prisoner exchange with the US:

▪️Vadim Krasikov, a former Russian intelligence officer arrested in Germany in 2019 and accused by Berlin of terminating Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili on German soil.

▪️Ludwig Gisch and Maria Mayer, arrested in 2022 in Slovenia and accused of being deep-cover Russian intelligence operatives whose names (if Western media is to be believed) are Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva.

▪️Roman Seleznev, a Russian IT specialist who was accused by US authorities of being a hacker and of defrauding banks of millions of dollars.

▪️ Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman who was arrested in Switzerland in 2021 and extradited to the US. The American authorities accused Klyushin of participating in “an elaborate hack-to-trade scheme that netted approximately $93 million through securities trades based on confidential corporate information stolen from U.S. computer networks,” as the US DoJ put it.

▪️Vadim Konoshchenok, a Russian businessman who the US authorities claim has ties to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). In 2023 he was arrested in Estonia and extradited to the US to be tried on charges of smuggling dual-use technologies and ammunition from the United States to Russia.

▪️Mikhail Mikushin, a Russian national who was arrested in Norway while posing as a Brazilian academic called Jose Assis Gaammaria. Norwegian authorities suspected him of being a Russian intelligence operative but Mikushin only admitted to using a false identity to gain employment at the University of Tromso.

▪️Pavel Rubtsov, also known as Pablo Gonzalez Yague, is a Russian-Spanish journalist who was arrested in 2022 in Poland on suspicion of espionage.

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❗️FSB published a video of citizens who were pardoned by the Russian president and exchanged for Russian citizens boarding a plane before flying to Turkiye.

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❗️Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked his Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko for the gesture of goodwill and pardon of German citizen Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death.

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Who left Russia with Putin's pardon as part of the prisoner swap deal:

Evan Gershkovich, a US journalist working for Wall Street Journal who was detained in Russia in March 2023 and convicted of espionage.

Paul Whelan, a Canadian-born former US marine who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and convicted of espionage two years later.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an employee of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Western propaganda outlet branded as a foreign agent in Russia) who was arrested in Russia in 2023 on charges of spreading fakes about Russian Armed Forces.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian journalist who was arrested in Russia in 2022 and a year later convicted on charges of treason and spreading fakes about Russian Armed Forces.

Kevin Lick, a citizen of both Russia and Germany who was convicted on espionage charges in 2023. He was arrested in Russia when trying to flee to Germany with data pertaining to Russian troop movements.

Demuri Voronin, a Russian political consultant who was convicted in 2023 on charges of treason for helping deliver to German intelligence sensitive information about Russian military activities in Syria.

Andrei Pivovarov, a former executive director of the now-defunct Open Russia, a shady organization established in 2001 by the infamous Russian oligarch and convicted criminal Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In 2021 Pivovarov was arrested in Russia and convicted on charges of cooperating with an undesirable organization.

Oleg Orlov, a political activist and co-founder of Memorial, an extremist organization masquerading as a “human rights” group. He was arrested and convicted for attempting to discredit Russian Armed Forces.

A number of Russian prisoners convicted on a variety of charges ranging from creating extremist organizations and trying to set up a terrorist network to spreading fakes about Russian Armed Forces: Ilya Yashin, Lilia Chanysheva, Ksenia Fadeeva, Vadim Ostanin, Aleksandra Skochilenko.

As part of the deal, Rico Krieger, a German mercenary working for Ukraine who was sentenced to death in Belarus this year after being found guilty of committing an act of terrorism on Belarusian soil, was pardoned by the President of Belarus and released. Moscow is grateful to Lukashenko for this goodwill gesture.

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Full text of the statement from the FSB Public Relations Center on the exchange:

On August 1, 2024, as a result of an exchange at the airport in Ankara, eight Russian citizens who had been detained and imprisoned in several NATO countries, along with their minor children, were returned to their homeland.

Their return was made possible thanks to the systematic and targeted work of competent state agencies, as well as foreign partners.

The Russian citizens were exchanged for a group of individuals acting in the interests of foreign states to the detriment of the security of the Russian Federation.

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📹 The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has released a video demonstrating the foreign prisoners exchanged for Russians boarding a bus in Ankara.

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📹 The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has released a video showing Russian citizens boarding a plane at Ankara airport after the exchange.

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📹 The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has released a video from an airplane's cabin during a flight from Moscow to Turkiye. The footage shows the exchanged Gershkovich and Krieger.

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▪️Eight Russians detained and imprisoned in a number of NATO countries have been returned to their homeland

▪️Decades of diplomacy: notable prisoner exchanges between the US and Soviet Union/Russia

▪️Tehran's response to Haniyeh's killing will be harsher than the previous strike on Israel

▪️Ex-CIA officer weighs in: Was Hamas leader Haniyeh tracked via WhatsApp?

▪️‘The only answer is to destroy them’: How Russia plans to handle Ukraine's Western-supplied F-16 jets

▪️With military expenses becoming unsustainable, how soon will Ukraine default?

▪️‘Olympics glorifies men punching women in the face’: fresh boxing controversy sparks outrage

▪️US push for new corridor from Central Asia to Europe without Russia or China

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⚡️All citizens returned to the Russian Federation will be presented with state awards, Putin reveals.

Vladimir Putin congratulated the freed Russians on their return to their homeland and thanked them for their loyalty to Russia.

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US Navy sends 12 warships to Middle East amid tensions in the region, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The ships were dispatched to the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea due to the escalation of the situation in the region following the assassinations of Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh and Lebanese Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, media has reported.

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Firefighters worked to contain a wildfire near the Italian state broadcaster, as video footage captured thick plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

The blaze was eventually brought under control.

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US Senator from Ohio J.D. Vance slams 9/11 plea deal

"We need a president who kills terrorists, not negotiates with them"

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawasawi have all agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for a life sentence.

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Boxer with male chromosomes vs. Russian woman: Is the result a foregone conclusion?

The International Olympic Committee really stirred the pot by allowing boxers with male chromosomes to compete in the female boxing division at the Paris Olympics, who failed a prior gender eligibility test. The latest match saw an Italian fighter bow out after being unable to withstand her opponent's powerful punches. But imagine if the IOC had let Russian athletes compete—would the result have been as 'obvious', or would we be seeing a whole new level of competition?

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting from Taipei were both stripped of their medals from last year’s World Championships in New Delhi, after DNA tests showed they have XY chromosomes. Biologically, the presence of the Y chromosome means the individual is a male.

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WhatsApp - a tool for Israel to track Hamas?

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed after Israeli intelligence installed spyware on his cell phone through a WhatsApp message to track his whereabouts that was used to launch a missile strike, Lebanese journalist Elia Manier has claimed.

Numerous reports have repeatedly suggested that the use of WhatsApp messenger to detect Hamas operatives has been a common practice for the Israeli military.

▪️The Palestinian digital rights group Sada Social earlier demanded a probe into the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) alleged use of WhatsApp user data to target Hamas “suspects” in the Gaza Strip with the help of the Israeli AI-aided system, Lavender. Both Meta* (the owners of the popular messaging service) and the IDF deny the allegations.

▪️“The Lavender system, supported by AI, identifies Palestinians by tracking their communications via WhatsApp or the groups they join,” Sada Social pointed out.

▪️The +972 website’s investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, in turn, previously argued that Lavender puts ordinary Palestinians “on a kill list and generate targets for assassination."

▪️“Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the [Hamas-Israel] war," which started October 7, 2023, according to Abraham.

▪️Notably, "It was known in advance that 10% of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all," he added.

▪️On the whole, Lavender “marked some 37,000 Palestinians as suspected ‘Hamas militants,’ most of them of junior [rank]” for killing, per Abraham.

▪️Bahraini rights activist Esra’a Al Shafei has meanwhile stressed that Meta* must “fully investigate” how WhatsApp’s metadata may be used “to track, harm, or kill its users throughout Palestine.”

▪️Former military intelligence and CIA operations officer Philip Giraldi earlier told Sputnik that Israel had invested a lot of money in various electronic tracking techniques like Lavender that enable it to locate and attack targets.

*Meta is banned in the Russian Federation for extremist activities.

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