The US and Russia won us over with a prisoner exchange but the perception of the deal is quite different

 Nigel Gold-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that by including Krasikov in the deal, "Putin has shown how important it is to him to bring back jailed Russian spies."

President Vladimir Putin walked the red carpet between two rows of rifle-toting honor guards and warmly welcomed intelligence operatives freed in the biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War.

"The motherland has not forgotten about you for a minute," Putin said, hugging each of them as they stepped down the steps of the jetliner that took them home.

Putin, who rarely - if ever - these days travels to airports to greet foreign heads of state, had a clear, morale-boosting message to his security services: If you get caught, Russia will bring you home.

For the Kremlin, hitman Vadim Krasikov, jailed in Germany for killing a former Chechen terrorist in Berlin, was perhaps the most important component in the swap that swapped eight Russians for 16 Westerners and Russian dissidents jailed in recent years.

Moscow released American journalists Ivan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmsheva, former US Marine Paul Whalen and a group of top dissidents. Washington hailed it as a major diplomatic victory. But so did Moscow.

Tatyana Stenovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said, "Putin is sending a signal that those who work abroad will receive maximum protection and if they are arrested, the state will fight for their return and roll out the red carpet for them. ."

She noted that Russian and Western perceptions of the deal were quite different. "In the West, it is seen from a humanitarian and political perspective, followed closely by the media, which is important to society," Stenovaya told The Associated Press. "In Russia, it's not an issue for society, it's an issue for the state."

She added that the average Russian probably "doesn't even know the names of those who returned." "But for Putin, those who returned to Russia are real heroes, patriots who worked for the state and defended the national interest."

Krasikov was convicted on August 23, 2019, of the murder of Zelimkhan "Tornike" Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian national who fought against Russian troops in Chechnya and later claimed asylum in Germany. Sentencing him to life in prison in 2021, German judges said Krasikov had acted on the orders of Russian officials, who had given him the resources to commit the murder.

In 2019, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any Russian involvement in the assassination. But on Friday, he said Krasikov is an officer of the Federal Security Service and once served in the FSB's special forces Alpha unit, along with some of Putin's bodyguards.

Nigel Gold-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that by including Krasikov in the deal, "Putin has shown how important it is to him to bring back jailed Russian spies."

He noted that the Russian leader's "decision to get back Krasikov was the key to this exchange."

Russia released twice as many people as the West in what Gold-Davis described as "a striking departure from the strict parity (or better) that Russia had always insisted on in previous exchanges".

When it suits him, Putin has occasionally accepted unequal exchanges.

In September 2022, Ukraine agreed to release jailed opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, whom Putin knew personally, and dozens of other Ukrainians in exchange for more than 200 Ukrainians in Russian custody.