Russia, US hold new talks after american freed in prisoner swap

Henry Meyer, Bloomberg News on Apr 10, 2025

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Russian and U.S. officials were holding a fresh round of talks in Turkey, after a prisoner swap in which Moscow released detained American Ksenia Karelina.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on the X platform Thursday that Karelina was “on a plane back home” after President Donald Trump had secured her release.

Karelina was exchanged for Russian citizen Arthur Petrov in a swap conducted at Abu Dhabi international airport through the mediation of the United Arab Emirates, Russia’s Federal Security Service said Thursday, according to the state-run Tass news service.

Karelina, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen who was a resident of Los Angeles, was sentenced to 12 years for treason in August last year over a donation she had made to a charity that helps Ukraine. She was detained during a family visit to the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the prisoner exchange earlier Thursday, said Petrov was a dual Russian-German citizen detained in 2023 in Cyprus on a U.S. request for allegedly exporting dual-use electronics. CIA Director John Ratcliffe negotiated the swap and was at Abu Dhabi airport to greet Karelina, the newspaper said.

The U.S.-Russia talks taking place in Istanbul are focused on restoring the two countries’ diplomatic missions, as well as direct flights that Washington suspended following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Alexander Darchiyev told state news service RIA Novosti. The war in Ukraine is not on the agenda, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday.

The meeting comes after President Vladimir Putin’s representative, Kirill Dmitriev, returned from two days of consultations in the U.S. last week and signaled there’d be new talks. Dmitriev met with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Rubio in Washington, days after the U.S. president had expressed frustration with Putin over a lack of progress in achieving a ceasefire in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Darchiyev is leading Moscow’s delegation in the Istanbul talks, while U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Sonata Coulter heads the negotiators from Washington, RIA earlier reported.

The release of Karelina is the second swap of detainees since Trump became president in January. Russia freed U.S. teacher Marc Fogel in February during a visit to Moscow by Witkoff, who met Putin for several hours.

Putin and Trump have held two publicly announced phone calls since the U.S. president took office, kicking off a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow after contacts were all but cut off following the start of the war.

U.S. and Russian representatives previously discussed restoring embassy operations during a meeting at the U.S. Consul General’s residence in Istanbul on Feb. 27, after which Putin said the renewed contacts with Trump’s administration “give us some hope.”