When a notorious Russian assassin and an American journalist boarded separate planes in Turkey on August 1, it was the culmination of a secret, dramatic prisoner swap deal between Russia and the West that had been negotiated for about two years, starting in 2022.
With it, the exchange of 24 prisoners was contracted.
But the talks, conducted in secret by Russia, the United States (US) and four European countries, accelerated earlier this year and have intensified in recent weeks.
Those negotiations were sometimes feverish and at great trials.
They were started at a time of growing tensions between the USA and Russia due to the war in Ukraine.
"It was the culmination of many rounds of complex, painstaking negotiations over many, many months," Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser who played a key role in reaching the deal, said shortly after the prisoner exchange.
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Senior White House officials detailed the sequence of events in an August 1 briefing with reporters, which included the BBC's US partner, CBS TV and Radio Network (CBS).
They said that the first hint of Moscow's possible readiness for an agreement was in the fall of 2022.
USA and Russia are negotiated the release of Britney Greiner, American basketball star who was arrested for possession of cannabis oil and sent to a Russian penal colony.
Greiner was released later that year in exchange for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
But during those talks, White House officials said Russia made it clear it wanted to free Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a man in a busy Berlin park on direct orders from the Kremlin.
Sullivan told his German counterpart that Russia was seeking Krasikov's release and asked if Berlin would consider releasing him in exchange for Alexei Navalny, a well-known anti-Putin campaigner and opposition leader jailed in Russia.
Germany, however, was not willing to release the man who had committed such a brazen murder on its soil.
Although Sullivan did not get a definitive answer from Berlin, initial talks in 2022, held between the US and Russia and between the US and Germany, helped pave the way for the larger and more complex deal that was reached in recent weeks and finalized on a hot airport runway in Turkey.
It succeeded because both sides, at least to some extent, signaled what they wanted.
Russia has made it clear that it wants Krasikov.
And Washington wanted not only Navalny, but also Paul Whelan, a former marine who was sentenced to prison in Russia in 2018 on charges of espionage.
Then the initial terms of a possible prisoner exchange agreement began to take shape, but the road to a final agreement was still long, very long.
At the end of March 2023, Russian intelligence agents arrested Evan Gershkovich, a 31-year-old journalist for The Wall Street Journal from New Jersey while reporting from Russia.
His detention sparked a barrage of condemnation from the US and its allies.
A day later, US President Joe Biden instructed Sullivan to make a deal that would ensure the return of both the journalist and Whelan to America.
The USA contacted Russia directly.
That's when serious communication began, White House officials said, and the foreign ministers of the two countries spoke on the phone.
But the intelligence services soon took over the conversations from these top diplomats, something the US was reluctant to do since Gershkovich was accused of espionage and Washington feared that the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would only fuel the allegations.
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In late 2023, the U.S. realized that freeing Krasikov's killer was critical to reaching any deal, senior White House officials said.
Offers were made to Russia that did not include the release of the 58-year-old killer.
And Moscow would reject every one.
Since Krasikov was imprisoned in Germany, not in the US, Washington had no power to release him.
Sullivan spoke to his German counterpart almost every week in late 2023 and early January 2024, trying to convince him to release Krasikov and meet Russia's key demand for this deal.
Any possible agreement, according to White House officials, was entirely dependent on Germany's willingness to release Krasikov.
Moscow's final position, they said, was that its jailed spies must be freed in exchange for Americans accused by Russia of espionage.
With this in mind, the US was trying to find more Russian spies who were in the prisons of their allies and who could be part of the grand deal.
US officials, diplomats and CIA personnel have traveled the world looking for friendly governments willing to release prisoners who fit that description, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The result of their efforts was seen on August 1, when the Russians were released from prisons in Poland, Slovenia and Norway.
In February of this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with President Biden at the White House.
According to White House officials, on August 1 they discussed possible options for an exchange that would include all key people - Krasikov, Navalny, Velan, Gershkovic.
There were also positive signals from Russia.
At the beginning of February, u interview with Tucker Carlson, the former host of the American TV channel Fox News (Fox News), Vladimir Putin spoke about Geršković.
"I do not rule out the possibility that Gershkovich will return to his homeland," Putin said.
As the BBC's Russia editor Steve Rosenberg writes, it was a very public and clear hint: Moscow was open to a deal.
However, on February 16, 2024, just days after Carlson's interview with Putin and the White House meeting between Chancellor Scholz and President Biden, and before any offer could be made to the Russians, a possible deal collapsed due to tragic circumstances.
Probably the most important prisoner who could be included in the exchange, Alexei Navalny, died at the age of 47 in his prison cell in Siberia.
His supporters and relatives, as well as many foreign officials, blamed Putin for his death.
Russian authorities said he died of natural causes.
Although almost nothing was known about the negotiations at the time of Navalny's death, his associate Marija Pevchik publicly said that he was soon to be released in exchange for Krasikov.
At the time, BBC News was unable to independently confirm her claims.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, denied that a possible agreement was on the horizon.
But on August 1, the White House confirmed that it was working to include Navalny in the exchange deal that eventually led to Russia freeing three of his associates.
"The team lost hope and energy," said a visibly emotional Sullivan, describing the impact of Navalny's death on the deal.
A tragic coincidence also happened - Geršković's mother and father met with Sullivan in the White House on the same day that Navalny's death was announced.
Realizing the importance of that news and the risk to the negotiations, Sullivan told them that the further road to negotiations would be "a little more thorny".
It was necessary to change the terms of a possible agreement, and the USA and Germany reorganized.
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Then US Vice President Kamala Harris held two important meetings in an attempt to keep alive talks on a possible exchange, a senior US administration official told the BBC.
In mid-February, she attended the Munich Security Conference, where she emphasized to Chancellor Solac the importance of releasing Krasikov.
She also met with Robert Golob, the prime minister of Slovenia, where two Russian citizens were in prison, which the US had designated as a priority for Moscow.
Both were released on August 1.
In the spring, the White House drew up a new proposal for an agreement that no longer included Navalny, and in June Berlin agreed to exchange Krasikov.
"I'll do it for you," Scholz told President Biden, according to Sullivan.
The terms of the agreement have been delivered to Russia.
Moscow responded a few weeks ago, in mid-July, by accepting the terms of the deal, which included the release of prisoners in Russia who were on the list.
However, as the negotiations approached the final stage, internal US politics intervened, because after a bad TV duel with the Republican Donald Trump, Biden was under enormous pressure from his Democratic Party to give up his candidacy for another presidential term.
According to Sullivan, just an hour before Biden announced on July 21 that he would not be a candidate in the presidential elections in November, he spoke on the phone with his Slovenian colleague to arrange a prisoner exchange.
As with any important prisoner exchange, the deal was not guaranteed even when the planes were on the tarmac and the route for the freed prisoners to travel home was settled.
"We were anxiously waiting and crossing our fingers until just a few hours ago," Sullivan said on the afternoon of August 1.
President Biden later posted a joint picture of the freed Americans on a plane headed for the US, along with a short message.
"(They) are safe, free and on their way, in the arms of their families".
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