The United States was working on a prisoner exchange that would have included Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny before his death, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
Navalny died in an Arctic prison under suspicious circumstances on February 16.
Sullivan is the first US government official to publicly confirm that prisoner exchange negotiations with Navalny were underway at the time.
In an address on August 1, US President Joseph Biden said some of Navalny's associates were involved in the prisoner exchange, including Liliya Chanisheva, Ksenia Fadeeva and Vadim Ostanin.
Biden confirmed that among those exchanged are Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, as well as Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovic, and former US Marine Paul Willan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, opposition activist, Russian-British citizen.
On August 1, Russia, the USA and several other countries conducted a prisoner exchange, among which 16 people were released from Russian custody.
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Navalny, a longtime anti-corruption campaigner and Russia's most prominent opposition politician for more than a decade, was 47 when he died in a Russian prison.
At the time of his death, the prominent Kremlin critic was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism that he, his supporters, Western officials and others called politically motivated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed in March that Navalny was to be exchanged for some of the prisoners in Western countries.
Having then secured a fifth presidential term in elections in which he had no serious rival, Putin told reporters that people outside his administration told him a few days before Navalny's death about the planned exchange "for some people" closed in the West.
Putin said that he immediately agreed to it on the condition that Navalny never return to Russia, the BBC reported at the time.
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Biden thanked Erdogan
Today, Biden thanked his Turkish colleague Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the large exchange of prisoners between Russia and several Western countries that took place in Ankara, the Turkish presidency announced, reports the Beta agency.
"During the conversation, American President Biden thanked President Erdogan for his efforts aimed at making the exchange of prisoners go well," the statement of the Turkish presidency reads.
In Ankara, Turkey coordinated the exchange of 26 prisoners from Russia and several Western countries, including the American journalist Evan Geršković, the Turkish presidency announced today after media reports that a large prisoner exchange between Russia and the USA is underway.
"The MIT (Turkish intelligence service) conducted in Ankara the largest prisoner exchange operation in recent times, which included the exchange of 26 people from prisons in seven countries (USA, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus)," the Turkish Presidency announced. , specifying that seven planes participated in the transport of prisoners.
Among the exchanged prisoners, Vadim Krasikov, a suspected Russian agent imprisoned in Germany for the murder of a former Chechen separatist commander in Berlin in 2019, was handed over to Russia, the Turkish presidency announced.
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