The elite of Russia’s political opposition were released on August 1 in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War, but the most famous political opponent was missing: opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. He was supposed to be part of the deal,  The Guardian reports, but died in prison on February 16 in suspicious circumstances.

A plane carried 13 individuals who had been imprisoned in Russia until that morning, including three of Navalny's regional coordinators who were jailed for "extremism." Also part of the swap were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans, who were on a separate plane headed back to the United States.

The moment of their disembarkation was one of joy tempered by a profound sense of loss and anger over the absence of Navalny. When negotiations to swap prisoners began several years earlier, Navalny was a key figure in them.

These negotiations began at a meeting in Geneva between Joe Biden, shortly after he became President of the United States, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. During this meeting, Putin suggested the establishment of a special channel for prisoner swaps, a throwback to Cold War practices. Biden agreed, leading to a series of negotiations that eventually resulted in high-profile exchanges, including the release of American basketball player Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2022.

Putin fully focused on the release of FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had murdered a Chechen exile in Germany in 2019 and, after being caught in the act, was serving a life sentence in a German jail.

Journalist Christo Grozev, known for exposing Russian spies and assassins, was the first to identified Krasikov as a Russian hitman, who had been travelling under a false name, and became instrumental in lobbying for Navalny’s release, The Guardian reports. Grozev believed it was possible to persuade Germany to release Krasikov in exchange for Navalny.

Grozev pushed the US special presidential envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, to ask Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to intervene. Abramovich, who is close to Putin and was also involved as a backchannel in informal negotiations with Ukraine, was seen as a conduit to the Russian president. Initially he hesitated but eventually conveyed the proposal to Putin, who surprisingly agreed, according to Grozev, speaking to The Guardian.

By autumn, Putin had given his approval in principle to the Navalny-Krasikov exchange. Negotiations then involved securing agreements from allies in Slovenia and Norway to include their detained Russian spies in the swap, making the deal more palatable for Berlin. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was rightly worried about a public backlash if he released and pardoned a murderer that had carried out a hit in broad daylight in the centre of the German capital. In order to sell the exchange to the German public a bigger deal  was needed and in the end five Germans were included in the exchange.

The negotiations, documented by a Wall Street Journal investigation, involved numerous players across Washington, Berlin and Moscow. A significant role was played by Ella Milman, Gershkovich's mother, who tirelessly lobbied US officials, including door-stopping US national security advisor Jake Sulivan. She also met with German officials at the World Economic Forum in Davos, leading to direct discussions between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Biden.

An eight-for-eight deal emerged, potentially involving Navalny, Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan, among others. Final approval from Putin seemed assured. However, just as the deal was about to be finalised, Navalny died under unexplained circumstances in a remote Arctic penal colony, taking that card off the table and making the exchange unworkable.

However, after several changes of personnel on the US side, the deal was eventually revived, finally resulting in the August 1 exchange.

Grozev was out shopping for clothes for the Western prisoners, who had arrived still wearing their prison fatigues, when he talked to Shaun Walker of The Guardian. The freed prisoners expressed mixed feelings about their release and have caused some controversy by saying they would like to return to Russia and that sanctions on “ordinary Russians” should be eased, but all of them expressed sadness that Navalny was not among their number.