Scott Ritter: Prisoner swap may be ‘the best that US-Russia relations will be for some time now’

Scott Ritter: Prisoner swap may be ‘the best that US-Russia relations will be for some time now’

Among the eight people released by the US in Thursday’s prisoner swap was Vadim Krasikov, the former Russian intelligence officer was arrested in Germany in 2019 and accused by Berlin of terminating Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili on German soil.

In an interview with Sputnik, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter underscored that Krasikov was meted out a life-sentence in German prison for wiping out “somebody who had butchered, murdered Russian prisoners of war during the Chechen conflict and, accordingly, was hunted down and killed in Berlin”.

According to Ritter, the prisoner exchange taking place in the twilight of Joe Biden’s presidency “may be the best that US-Russian relations are gonna be for some time now.”

“I don't think US-Russia relations are going to be in a position where such a prisoner swap could have occurred in the next year, maybe the next two years. So it needed to happen now, and that's why it did. The largest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War. Who knows what the future will hold... Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend of good relations, but probably not,” Ritter concluded.