Hyderabad: The first major exchange between the US and the then Soviet Union occurred over 60 years ago on the Glienicke Bridge that linked West Berlin to East Germany and later became known as the "Bridge of Spies."
The US traded convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose spy plane was shot down over the then Soviet Union. As part of the February 1962 deal, Frederic Pryor, who was an American graduate student was detained in East Berlin on suspicion of spying, was also released.
- February 10, 1962:
Swap on 'Bridge of Spies':
The first major prisoner exchange between the then Soviet Union was famously called the "Bridge of Spies ". The swap was referred to as the "Bridge of Spies." because the exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge, marking the border between the Eastern Bloc and West Berlin. A convicted Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel, a British-born Soviet intelligence officer, who had worked for the KGB in New York, was swapped for Francis Gary Powers, an American pilot.
The History of the Glienicke Bridge:
The Glienicke Bridge became quite popular during the Cold War, not only for its beauty but for its function as an agent-swapping location for the Eastern and Western governments.
- October 11, 1963:
The U.S. freed two alleged Soviet spies -- Ivan Egorov and his wife Aleksandra, in exchange for two Americans imprisoned on espionage charges. The Americans freed were student Marvin Makinen, who was jailed in Kyiv in 1961, and Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit missionary arrested in the Soviet Union in the year 1941.
- April 27, 1979: The Soviets freed five dissidents including Aleksandr Ginzburg, in exchange for two Russians convicted of spying in the U.S.
- June 11, 1985: One of the biggest agent swaps known in history occurred at the Glienicke Bridge in Potsdam. There was a swap of 23 American agents held in Eastern Europe for Polish agent Marian Zacharski and another three Soviet agents arrested in the West. The exchange was the result of three years of negotiation.
- February 11, 1986: Once again the Glienicke Bridge played host to this exchange involving Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, known also as Natan Sharansky, and Czechoslovak nationals Karl and Hana Koecher. Sharansky was the first political prisoner, who was released by then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 11, 1986. He was accused of being a US spy. He spent nine years in prison. He and three low-level Western spies were swapped for Czech spies Karl Koecher and wife Hana Koecher, who had been arrested two years earlier in New York City, along with Soviet bloc spies Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Marian Zacharski and Detlef Scharfenorth, held in West Germany.
- September 1986: Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for US News & World Report in the then Soviet Union, was arrested and accused of espionage by the KGB. The US administration believed Daniloff had been arrested in retaliation for the detention of Gennadi Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations. A Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov, a founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group was also freed, who subsequently moved to the United States.
- July 09, 2010: It was one of the largest prisoner exchanges between the two countries since the Cold War took place on the tarmac in Vienna, Austria. Washington handed over 10 Russian spies who had lived undercover in the US for years until their arrests in 2010 by the FBI. In exchange, Russia released four of its own citizens to the West, including Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who was imprisoned for passing secrets to British intelligence.
- April 27, 2022: A U.S. Marine veteran arrested in Russia in 2019 for attacking a police officer, Trevor Reed, who denied the charge, was released, 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.
- December 09, 2022: U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a high-stakes swap that came amidst worsening relations between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine. The pair were swapped at the Al Bateen Executive Airport in Abu Dhabi.
