Russia, USA, Poland, Germany, Turkey and Belarus participated in the large exchange. The Russians released 16 political prisoners, including writer "Wall Street Journal" Evan Gerszkowicz and German Rico Krieger, previously sentenced to death in Belarus.
The West, on the another hand, gave distant the killer of Wadi Krasikov and a couple of Russian spies from Slovenia. Pablo González, a writer on Spanish passport who had worked for GRU intelligence for years, besides returned to Moscow.
Poland wanted to exchange prisoners
The case is described on Friday Onet, citing the book of American journalists, Poland tried to implement its plan. Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson in the book "Swap. A Secret past of the fresh Cold War" ("Exchanges. The secret past of the fresh Cold War"), the Polish government wanted Belarus to release Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish-Belarusian writer and activist of the Polish number imprisoned in Minsk for years.
"However, the Ambassador of the United States explained that this would origin additional complications that could jeopardise the full agreement," writes the authors. The Polish side accepted the removal of Russian spy pretending to be a writer Paul Rubcov without problem.
Who's Pablo Gonzalez?
As we wrote in onTemat.pl, Paweł Rubcow had a fictitious name – he introduced himself as Pablo González, a Spanish journalist. He was arrested in Przemyśl 4 days after Russia's Russian invasion of Ukraine – 28 February 2022.
A fewer weeks earlier, Rubcow was interviewed by the safety Service of Ukraine, which accused him of being in military controlled zones without appropriate accreditation and ordered him to leave the country.
The Polish services considered him to be a GRU agent and presented him with allegations of espionage from Art. 130 par. 1 of the Penal Code, threatened with a punishment of up to 10 years in prison, as the spokesperson for the peculiar Services Coordinator informed him.
Rubcow owned 2 passports – Russian and Spanish. Born in Moscow, his parent had Spanish roots and returned to Catalonia in the 1980s with her family. Rubcov's father was Alexey Rubcow, manager of the RBC media company. Paul himself later worked for the regional left-wing paper "Gara".
Let us remind you that on Thursday, the U.S. embassy in Minsk reported that the delegation they led is on their way from Belarus to Vilnius along with 52 released prisoners of various nationalities. Polish Ministry of abroad Affairs confirmed that among them there were Poles. But without Andrew Pochobut.
