The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported late last month that “Russian group pushes to free accused spies in exchange for Australian Oscar Jenkins”, the mercenary who was captured late last year in Donbass, in a deal that could also include Simeon “Aussie Cossack” Boikov. The last-mentioned is an activist-journalist who received Russian citizenship in September 2023 and has been sheltering in the Russian Consulate in Sydney to escape what he describes as political persecution for his views.
Meanwhile, the Russian couple are accused of espionage after the wife allegedly instructed her husband to access her work account while she was in Russia on leave from her job as an army information systems technician to pass along secret information, thus making them higher-value figures for a swap. Rybar, which is a popular milblog channel on Telegram that also doubles as a think tank of sorts, assessed that they and Jenkins might be exchanged after each receive their respective verdicts.
Their report mentioned Boikov in connection with this scenario but was ambiguous about whether he’d ultimately be included in any prospective swap. That might be because he hasn’t been accused of espionage like that Russian couple was so Australia might be less likely to agree to this. At the same time, Russia could argue that Jenkins is a much higher-value figure than all three of those other Australians combined since he’s a mercenary who was captured on the battlefield, so it’s fair to swap him for them.
If a deal of some sort is clinched, then it could even form the basis of a larger swap if Trump proposes that other Western countries get involved to exchange some of the detained Russians within their jurisdictions for some of their own citizens who might still be detained in Russia, though it’s unclear who. Nevertheless, it’s known that countries sometimes detain others’ suspected spies without publicly announcing it, so there might be some of them on both sides who could be swapped if the will exists.
Trump has a reason to push for this since it’s important to continue building trust with Putin amidst their nascent negotiations over Ukraine, and the precedent of recently swapping Alexander Vinnik for Marc Fogel and three detainees in Belarus (one of whom is an American) bodes well for the aforesaid proposal. The peace process could drag on for months if a ceasefire is first agreed to for lifting Ukraine’s martial law and thus allowing for new elections later this year so this isn’t an urgent task for all involved.
Even so, it could still be in the cards, whether as a low-level swap between Australia and Russia (regardless of whether Boikov is included even though he arguably should be) or something much larger. The bigger, the better when it comes to building trust and possibly even laying the basis for a gradual Russian-Western rapprochement after the proxy war ends, albeit within understandable political limits. It would therefore be a good idea for all potential stakeholders to seriously consider this possibility.
