In the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, Russia and America agreed to release 24 individuals currently in custody. The exchange of spies is as old as espionage, but that wasn’t what happened on Thursday. Though some actual Western spies were probably released amongst the number, most of those freed were nothing of the sort. They included, most prominently, Evan Gershkovich, a highly regarded Wall Street Journal reporter, falsely accused of espionage on the most flimsy of pretexts. The list of American, German and Russian dissidents, reporters and private individuals lost in what Russia laughably calls its justice system, and released today, makes for extraordinary and enraging reading. As I write, they are finally back with their families. 

So why won’t I be celebrating? I am relieved that brave men and women will be breathing free air again, but what of the next hostages taken by the Kremlin? And what of other side of the balance sheet — the men now returning to Moscow as heroes?

Putin has been incentivised to keep arresting innocent people

Look down the list of Russians we have just set loose on the world. It includes Vadim Krasikov, the Kremlin hitman who murdered a Georgian dissident in cold blood on German soil, Vadim Konoshchenok, who ran a global money laundering operation for the Russian government, Vladislav Klyushin, who made $93 million on the stock market with information obtained through hacking into US computer systems to acquire corporate secrets, and Roman Seleznev, who ran a $50 million cyberfraud ring. 

America is exchanging killers, hackers and fraudsters acting to existentially undermine the Western alliance for a series of wrongly arrested journalists, opposition politicians and tourists, many of whom were locked up precisely to be used in this sort of prisoner exchange. It is one thing to trade like for like, genuine spy for genuine spy, but a series of moral and strategic lines have been fatally crossed in this unequal exchange. 

First of all, Putin has been incentivised to keep arresting innocent people, in the justified belief that the West will hand over actual Russian assets in return. Secondly, the motives for this swap were not humanitarian, but cynically political. Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was there to greet the freed Americans on the runway, just two weeks into her election campaign — a perfect photo-op. Finally, the trading not merely of imprisoned spies, but also hackers and an assassin, sends a more deadly message. It is one thing to free those sent to gather intelligence, but quite another to release individuals guilty of economic sabotage and state-sanctioned homicide. Putin’s agents and assassins will be able to act in the knowledge that even if caught, they will not face life in prison, and the regime will be emboldened to commit further acts of sabotage and murder on Western soil. 

In Britain alone, Russia has struck twice, first horrifically killing Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 via radiation poisoning, a method intended to inflict maximum terror on potential Russian defectors. The second attempt, in 2018, likewise against defectors, saw Sergei and Yulia Skripal targeted with a deadly nerve agent. The Skripals survived, but one bystander who was accidentally exposed did not. Russia has shown not one hint of remorse or hesitation since, and the man wanted by the British authorities for Litvinenko’s murder, Andrey Lugovoy, has enjoyed a prominent political career in Russia, where he enjoys making crude threats towards dissidents that flee to Britain from the safety of the Russian Duma. 

These poisonings, using incredibly dangerous substances, endangered uninvolved British citizens as well as Russian defectors, and constituted acts of terrorism as surely as a bomb in a train station. In both cases the British and Western response was well within the range that Russia could reasonably have anticipated and was fully prepared to bear, involving diplomatic expulsions and minor sanctions. This recent prisoner exchange falls within this pattern of dangerously predictable and pliant under-retaliation to blatant acts of aggression, and directly endangers British citizens.

At a time when we are confronting Putin in Ukraine, this decision will have dire consequences not only for us in the West, but also for those we are supporting in Kiev. Our best odds of deterring Putin from further escalation, and of forcing him into an advantageous peace deal, are to show strength, ruthlessness and determination. If he believes Western leaders are willing to make sacrifices and inflict damage, and keep doing so long term, he will have every reason to check his aggression. But if he believes, as communicated last Thursday, that he will be rewarded for illegal and aggressive acts, and that Western leaders will capitulate in the face of hostage taking, assassination and terror, he will have every reason to redouble his efforts against us. 

In the cases of killers like Vadim Krasikov, no exchange should ever be countenanced, on any basis

So what should we do instead? In the first place, the exchange rate of Russian agent to wrongly convicted innocent, if it occurs at all, should be set extremely high — think 100 to 1, rather than 2 to 1. If he wants his spies back, he must be prepared to start emptying his jails, not merely trading a few hostages at a time. When it comes to the most egregious cases, such as the arrest of a prominent American journalist with no basis in evidence, the response should not be any sort of exchange at all, in the first instance, but rather instant retaliation. Instead of offering Putin a reward, he should in each case be handed a punishment. Every time a NATO citizen is wrongly arrested, a fresh sanction should be levied or a new shipment of weapons sent to Kiev. Only after this has happened, should an exchange be considered, and only on the most disproportionate of terms. 

In the cases of killers like Vadim Krasikov, no exchange should ever be countenanced, on any basis. Allowing Russia to kill within the West must be the most fundamental of red lines. Deterrence here should be maximal and absolute. Punitive responses must be automatic. Such individuals should never be returned to Russia, and life sentences should be applied. Intelligence and security agencies must make every effort to seize them by force, and the message must be extraordinarily clear: foreign agents who shed blood in NATO countries can never be allowed to rest easy again, and when caught, will never be released. 

It is too late, of course, to reverse the latest act of cowardice in the face of Putin’s hostage taking, but it is not too late to reestablish deterrence. Laws directed against foreign assassins appearing in parliaments across Europe would send an extremely strong signal to Russia. Likewise, an official NATO doctrine on the matter, along with clear public statements by British, German, French and American leaders about the response to any future hostage taking and prisoner exchanges, would also help reverse the current image of Western weakness.

Shifting Putin’s calculus in the short to medium term is important. But to see off totalitarian rivals like Russia and China in the long term, the West must reorient its thinking entirely. Complacency and short termism must give way to proper planning, both economic and military, and, at a spiritual and psychological level, a steely resolve has to be recovered — a visible and manifest willingness to pay the price of victory, in the hopes that one never needs to.