Russian-Ukrainian Talks Lead to Moscow’s Implicit Recognition that It has Political Prisoners

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – One of the aspects of international negotiations often neglected by outside observers is that the greatest progress is made on issues that most people don’t think are central but that have enormous consequences and deserve to be noted and carefully assessed. Such have been the one and off Russian-Ukrainian “peace talks.”

            There have been two that are noteworthy. The first involved a Ukrainian decision to bring translators to the meetings, implicitly sending a message to Moscow that Ukrainians and Russians are not one nation but two (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/05/kyiv-gains-small-but-important-victory.html).

            The second may be even more important. Denis Mikhailov who headed Aleksey Navalny’s campaign office but now lives in Poland, notes that the Russians in the memoranda they handed over to Ukrainian negotiators acknowledge that Moscow has “political prisoners” (themoscowtimes.com/2025/06/27/the-kremlin-finally-acknowledged-russia-holds-political-prisoners-thats-a-big-step-a89548).

            In the past, Russian officialdom has always denied that there are any political prisoners in their country; but in this case, the Russian memoranda said “in black and white” that “there should be an exchange of political prisoners between the two countries, an implicit suggestion that this category must be recognized by both sides.

            This Russian move, Mikhailov insists, must not be seen as a simple recognition of reality or a magnanimous action. Instead, it was taken because the Kremlin needs “leverage” and by agreeing to have them as “bargaining chip, the Kremlin is now literally legalizing its own repressive policies on the international stage.

            There is no doubt that Moscow will seek to expand the definition of political prisoner to include Ukrainians under arrest in Russia and to demand that the many Russians who have committed crimes in Ukraine be returned as supposed political prisoners. Both human rights activists and Western democracies must come up with a serious response lest they be played.

It needs to be recognized that if dissidents in Russia are recognized as political prisoners who can become “bargaining chips,” then “there is a risk that freeing them will … strengthen the very system that produced them. But by making them that, Western governments and international must respond by being more supportive of those languishing in Russian prisons

But Mikhailov says he is “convinced that this recognition [of the reality of political prisoners in Russia, something the Kremlin has so long denied] opens up new opportunities. We cannot waste the opportunity that the Kremlin has provided us to secure the release of the hundreds of political prisoners held in Russia.”