Prisoner exchange

Louis Corvalan

Exchange of prisoners - an agreement under which parties in a confrontation (for example, in a state of war or other conflict ) simultaneously release certain prisoners: spies , prisoners of war , hostages or political prisoners . Usually such an exchange is accompanied by expulsion .

The exchange of prisoners in international law is regulated by the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949 .

The exchange of prisoners is possible when the leadership of both parties mutually accuse each other of physically persecuting political opponents and keeping them in custody (in prisons or camps), and torturing them.

Many left-wing radical organizations (for example, ALN , MR-8 , Tupamaros , etc.) captured high-ranking officials of their own and foreign countries in order to force governments to release tortured political prisoners.

The most famous case of the exchange of political prisoners in the USSR is the exchange of Luis Corvalan for Vladimir Bukovsky in December 1976 ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} .

October 5, 1986 , on the eve of the meeting of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik , in exchange for the Soviet intelligence officer arrested in the United States , he was expelled to the United States and deprived of Soviet citizenship Yuri Orlov ^[5] .

On July 9, 2010, it was reported that Russian President D. A. Medvedev signed a decree to pardon four Russian citizens ( Igor Sutyagin , Sergey Skripal , Alexander Zaporizhsky and Gennady Vasilenko ), satisfying their requests for pardon ^[6] . According to a source in the presidential administration, when deciding on a pardon, it was taken into account that all convicts had already been severely punished ^[7] . The pardon was carried out as part of an operation to exchange four Russian citizens convicted of espionage in favor of the United States and Great Britain and serving sentences in Russia for ten agents of the Russian special services (Russian citizens) detained in the United States in June 2010 ^[8] . According to the site Lenta.ru, the list of Russian prisoners for the exchange was proposed by the American authorities, and the exchange of Sutyagin was called a prerequisite for the transaction ^[9] .

Prisoner Exchange between Ukraine and Russia

On May 25, 2016 in Russia, President of Russia V.V. Putin signed a decree to pardon the Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko , and in Ukraine Petro Poroshenko granted petitions to pardon the Russian GRUSHNIKOV Evgeny Erofeev and Alexander Alexandrov. Subsequently, the countries exchanged convicts ^[10] . On June 14, 2016, an exchange of Ukrainian citizens convicted in Russia of Gennady Afanasyev and Yuri Soloshenko took place against Elena Glishchinsky and Vitaliy Didenko, who are accused of separatism and involvement in the events of May 2 .