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A high-profile prisoner swap between Russia and the West that may include jailed journalist Evan Gershkovich could take place this week, according to reports.
The exchange, which could also see Kremlin assassins sent back to Russia, would be the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the US since the Cold War.
Mr Gershkovich, who was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges by a Russian court last month, could return to the US as early as Thursday, US media reported. The Kremlin and Washington have not confirmed the swap.
It comes after a series of mysterious movements of prominent Western prisoners prompted speculation that Vladimir Putin had agreed to swap them for Russians held in the West.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap, involving the United States and Russia, had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
There were unconfirmed Russian media reports that another dissident, opposition activist Vadim Ostanin, had been removed from his Siberian prison and moved to Moscow.
Online Russian media outlet “Agenstvo” has reported that at least six special Russian government planes have flown in recent days to and from regions where prisons holding dissidents are located.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian man held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place.”
RIA also reported that four Russians jailed in the United States had disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.
It named them as Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok and Vladislav Klyushin. The US is also holding at least two other Russian nationals, Vladimir Dunaev and Roman Seleznev, convicted of serious cybercrimes, who could also figure.
In December 2022, Russia traded basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, serving a 25-year sentence in the US.
On 19 July, Mr Gershkovich was convicted unusually swiftly on espionage charges that he denies. He was handed 16 years in jail and Russia has already confirmed talks about his possible exchange.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also convicted in a secret trial the same day and sentenced to 6-1/2 years, accused of spreading false information about the Russian army. She denied wrongdoing.
Other US nationals behind bars in Russia include former schoolteacher Marc Fogel, convicted for possessing marijuana, which he said he used for medical reasons.
In Belarus, meanwhile, President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, on Tuesday pardoned Rico Krieger, a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges, again with unusual haste and state media coverage.
