Prisoner swap doesn’t mean much for US-Russia relations

Six months from retirement and in desperate need of a foreign policy win, President Joe Biden just got one with the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. citizen Paul Whelan, Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 13 other prisoners from Russia. The Americans, working with Germany, Poland, Slovenia, and Norway, agreed to send eight convicted prisoners back to Russia, the most infamous being Vadim Krasikov, a veteran of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan and a Russian intelligence operative who, in 2019, gunned down a Chechen dissident in the heart of Berlin.