OPINION:
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After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian President Vladimir Putin nominally resigned from the KGB with the rank of lieutenant colonel. But he never really left the KGB.
Referring to the KGB’s precursor Soviet intelligence agency, the Cheka, Mr. Putin likes to remind his fellow citizens that “there are no former Chekists.” Mr. Putin went on to serve as director of the KGB’s successor agency, the Federal Security Service, before President Boris Yeltsin appointed him acting president in 2000. Mr. Putin’s formative life experience was in cloak-and-dagger espionage.
Mr. Putin relies on his sycophantic security services and ruthless military to maintain his iron grip on the Kremlin by trampling on the rights of his fellow citizens, interfering in elections, and invading sovereign nations such as Georgia and Ukraine.
For Mr. Putin, the rule of law is anathema. The principles and values enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights represent the gravest threats to his corrupt regime.
Over the past few years, U.S. citizens have been caught in the crossfire of Mr. Putin’s conflict with the West. For the first time since the Cold War, American citizens — even journalists — are no longer safe in Mr. Putin’s Russia. Consider the growing list of unlawfully detained Americans, including schoolteacher Marc Fogel, Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Ksenia Karelina, and Radio Free Europe editor Alsu Kurmasheva.
In the case of Mr. Gershkovich and Ms. Kurmasheva, Mr. Putin wants to make it clear that only Kremlin propaganda and disinformation will be permitted, not a free press. Second, with an eye toward solidifying his domestic stature among his population and his inner circle, Mr. Putin wants to make it appear as if Russia is on a level playing field with the U.S., as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, even though Russia’s gross domestic product today is on a par with Italy’s.
Third, Mr. Putin deliberately tasks his intelligence services, especially the FSB, to target any Russian who espouses freedom, liberty or democracy. Without evidence, they are accused of being Western spies, just like the wrongfully detained Americans living out their days in barbaric penal colonies.
In Mr. Putin’s world of asymmetric warfare, Americans are held arbitrarily and without due process. In contrast, the U.S. has arrested Russian citizens who committed real crimes. Konstantin Yaroshenko, whom the U.S. traded for Trevor Reed in 2022, was a convicted drug smuggler. Viktor Bout, an infamous arms dealer known as the “merchant of death” whom the U.S. traded for basketball star Brittney Griner, was convicted of conspiracy to kill American citizens.
Mr. Fogel was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for reportedly bringing 0.6 ounces of medical marijuana into Russia. Ms. Karelina, who allegedly gave the equivalent of $51 to a Ukrainian charity, faces trial. According to Article 275 of the Russian criminal code, she will receive a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.
I caught up with renowned hostage negotiator Mickey Bergman, whose book, “In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad,” is due out in June, to discuss what a potential deal might look like.
Mr. Bergman emphasized that we should strive to “clear the decks” with an “all-for-all deal” rather than make one-for-one deals as we have in the recent past. In 2010, under the leadership of my former boss, Leon Panetta, the CIA negotiated a spy swap along the lines Mr. Bergman outlined, which involved trading 10 deep-cover Russian spies for four Russian nationals. At the time, no Americans were being held in Russia.
Mr. Putin would clearly like to engineer a trade for convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov, who is serving jail time in Berlin; Sergey Cherkasov, a Russian deep cover officer being detained in Brazil; Alexander Vinnik, a cryptocurrency expert who was extradited to the U.S. to face charges of money laundering; and Roman Seleznev, a criminal hacker who is serving a 27-year sentence in a U.S. prison.
There is no higher priority for the U.S. intelligence community than determining what it would take for Mr. Putin to make a deal. Mr. Putin is stealing years of the lives of our fellow citizens.
Last week, Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, said he was drafting a new proposal designed to secure the release of Mr. Gershkovich and Mr. Whelan. We should not, of course, expect a fair trade, because Mr. Putin has all the leverage of a dictator operating outside the rule of law.
Mr. Carstens would do well to heed Mr. Bergman’s advice and seek a comprehensive deal where no Americans are left behind enemy lines in Mr. Putin’s menacing Russia.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018.
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