A brief history of key prisoner swaps between Moscow and the West

An expansive prisoner swap involving Russia and a handful of Western countries has led to the release of two dozenpeople on Thursday, including Paul Whelanand Wall Street Journal reporter EvanGershkovich.

The White House said the U.S. had negotiated the trade with Russia, Germany and three other countries. It involved 24 prisoners, including 16 moving from Russia to the West and eight prisoners held in the West being sent back to Russia.

Here's a brief recap of some the most prominent prisoner exchanges involving Russia or the Soviet Union, as well as the United States, in past years and decades.

WATCH | Prisoners leave Russia behind:

Everything we know about the U.S.-Russia prisoner swap | About That

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February 1962 swap on 'Bridge of Spies'

In the first major prisoner exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Rudolf Abel, a convicted Soviet spy, was swapped for Francis Gary Powers, an American pilot.

The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge, which marked the border between the Eastern bloc and West Berlin and was commonly known as the "Bridge of Spies." The bridge would feature in several high-profile swaps during the Cold War.

Abel, a British-born Soviet intelligence officer, had worked for the KGB in New York. He served four years of a 30-year sentence before being exchanged.

Powers was piloting a U-2 spy plane when his aircraft was shot down in 1960 over present-day Yekaterinburg in Russia's Urals region. Powers parachuted to safety only to be captured by the Soviets and later convicted of espionage.

A large swap in June 1985

In what was the biggest trade of government agents in history, Marian Zacharski, a Polish former intelligence officer convicted of espionage against the U.S., was swapped alongside three other Eastern Bloc agents for 23 Westerners jailed for espionage in Warsaw Pact countries.

The swap, which also took place on the Glienicke Bridge, came after three years of negotiations.

February 1986 release ofAnatoly Shcharansky

The Glienicke Bridge once again played host to this exchange involving Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, known also as Natan Sharansky, and Czechoslovak nationals Karl and Hana Koecher.

The first political prisoner released by then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Sharansky had spent nine years in prison on charges of spying on behalf of the U.S. He was swapped alongside three low-level Western spies for the Koechers, who had moved to the U.S. and infiltrated the CIA, as well as several other Soviet bloc spies imprisoned in West Germany.

U.S. journalist freed in September 1986

In a case reminiscent of Evan Gershkovich, Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report in the Soviet Union, was arrested and accused of espionage by the KGB.

Daniloff, who said he had been framed, was jailed for less than a month before he was allowed to fly out of the Soviet Union without standing trial.

The Reagan administration believed Daniloff had been arrested in retaliation for the detention three days earlier in New York of Gennadi Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations.

The two men were swapped after weeks of negotiations alongside Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, a founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group who subsequently moved to the United States.

July 2010 spy swap

The most recent mass prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington saw ten Russian sleeper agents detained in the U.S. as part of the so-called 'Illegals Program' exchanged for four prisoners held in Russia.

The swap, which took place on the tarmac of Vienna International Airport, came after the FBI said a multi-year investigation had broken open a sleeper agent network of Russian spies planted in the U.S. by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

One of the swapped individuals was Sergei Skripal, a colonel in Russia's Military Intelligence Service (GRU) who was convicted of high treason for working as a double agent for Britain.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were later the subjects of a botched assassination attempt by poisoning in Salisbury, England in 2018.

U.S. marine freed in April 2022

A U.S. marine veteran arrested in Russia in 2019 for attacking a police officer, Trevor Reed, who denied the charge, was released in April 2022, two months after the start of the Ukraine war, for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and aviation transport expert imprisoned in the U.S. for drug smuggling.

Brittney Griner freedin December 2022

Less than a year after Reed's release, U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a high-stakes swap that came amid worsening relations between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine. The pair were swapped at the Al Bateen Executive Airport in Abu Dhabi.

WATCH | The end of Griner's ordeal:

WNBA star Brittney Griner freed from Russia in prisoner swap

2 years ago

Duration 2:08

Women's National Basketball Association player Brittney Griner, who had been detained in Russia since February, has been released from custody as part a high-level prisoner swap. The United States agreed to release convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for Griners freedom.