Why Putin considers he’s the champ in detainee swap
It’s something Vladimir Putin does seldom: go to the air terminal to meet individuals off a plane. Personally.
But he was there final night: on the landing area at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airplane terminal to meet and welcome those Russians whose discharge he’d secured from outside correctional facilites; portion of the biggest detainee swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Out of the plane and down the steps came 10 individuals, counting spies, sleeper operators and a indicted assassin.
“Congratulations on your return to the Motherland!” he told them.
You seem tell that the Kremlin accepts it has something to celebrate.
For the returning Russians there was a ruddy carpet gathering and a watch of respect. There were bouquets of blossoms and – for a few – embraces from the president. Mr Putin grasped Vadim Krasikov, the FSB hitman who’d been serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a Georgian-born Chechen dissident.
President Putin guaranteed them all state awards.
“I would like to address those of you who have a coordinate association to military service, likewise he proceeded. “Thank you for your devotion to your vow and your obligation to your Country, which has never overlooked you for a moment.”
There’s another message the pro-Kremlin press is putting out right presently: great riddance to those Russia has liberated from its jails and who’ve been flown abroad.
“Eight Russians who’d been imprisoned in Nato nations have returned to the Homeland in trade for people who had been acting to the disservice of Russia’s national security,” says the government paper.
Referring to the protesters discharged by Moscow, Komsomolskaya Pravda claims “they have jettisoned their previous Homeland and flown to those who enlisted them.”
Attempts to ruin pundits and rivals; extravagant laud for faithful supporters who are depicted as genuine nationalists. All this makes a difference the specialists make the case with the Russian individuals that the detainee swap was a victory for the Kremlin.
There is small question that the Kremlin sees the detainee swap as a triumph for Moscow. It got what it wanted… it got its operators back. Counting the man who was No.1 on its wish list, Krasikov. The German specialists had at first been unwilling to discharge a indicted professional killer, Who a German court had concluded had acted on sake of the Russian authorities.
That hesitance mollified as a more extensive bargain took shape.
But why was it so imperative for the Kremlin to secure Vadim Krasikov’s discharge and to bring him home?
Today’s Russian daily papers give a clue.
“We’re returning our guys” is the feature in the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta,
“We don’t forsake our own!” pronounces the pro-Putin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
That is absolutely the message the Kremlin needs to send to its specialists and spies. If we send you on missions overseas, and things go off-base. We’ll discover a way of getting you domestic. likewise
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