No rewards for Washington yet, as Moscow mulls proposed swap for Russian arms dealer

A push to use a prisoner swap to free two U.S. citizens from Russian detention may yield rewards for Washington, but experts say it provides no guarantees that future exchanges involving Moscow will be any more palatable.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed this week that Washington offered Russia a deal to bring American basketball star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a Canadian-born corporate security executive, home. Reports say arms dealer Viktor Bout could be exchanged in return.

Moscow made limited comment until Friday, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he's open to a discussion with Blinken. The two diplomats later spoke by phone, with Blinken telling reporters he urged his Russian counterpart to move forward on the proposal.

If Washington's approach prevails, the Biden administration could take credit for reuniting families and delivering results amid heightened tensions with Russia. 

Experts say there are always concerns such exchanges can provide motivation for authoritarian governments to use these mechanisms to their advantage now and in the future.

Weighing the pros and cons of the current proposal, Seva Gunitsky, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said he sees cause for concern if other people end up being unjustly detained because of the value they can provide in a future swap, based on what happens here.

And that's left him "very ambivalent" about the proposal, in terms of the precedent it could set, he said.

Yet Eliot Borenstein, a professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University (NYU), said such arrangements may indeed reward some bad behaviour, but that's a reality that has to be accepted when hard choices have to be made. 

"At some point, the other side has to decide what's important to them," said Borenstein.

Moscow did not seem to welcome the U.S. decision to talk openly about the proposal — though Blinken's remarks earlier in the week signalled to some the proposal was under consideration.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, told PBS NewsHour that Blinken's comments were "a very positive sign" about the potential for the deal to move forward.

"It sounds like they have put together a deal," said McFaul, who is calling for a third American — Marc Fogel — to be included in the exchange.

Stephen Sestanovich, the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor for International Diplomacy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, said the U.S. was likely speaking to people at home and also to Russia, when sharing the information about the pitch to swap prisoners.

"Publicity is definitely unusual in a case like this," Sestanovich told CBC News via email.