Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich Arrested in Russia

I don't have any reading material, sorry. But I imagine there isn't an exact script. It is a matter of who you need, what they need from you, what kind of horse trading can get something done. And in the case of diplomacy, I suspect threats and cajoling come into play more often than not. You'd think every situation is going to be different; sometimes an appeal to friendship works, other times you need to lean on people.

From what I read (although who knows if what I read is true?), the Germans were not keen at all on letting Krasikov go for obvious reasons. He's a really bad guy and a killer for Russian Intelligence and the murder he carried out was particularly brazen. But they did get 5 German citizens back. The negotiations around that probably played a huge role, the way stories are saying. I am not saying it happened exactly this way, but I could totally see a situation where the U.S. was forced to leave Marc Fogel behind in a choice between him and the Germans that Germany got back for letting Krasikov go. That way Putin gets to keep fucking with America, America got some hostages / prisoners back, and Germany got some hostages / prisoners back for letting Krasikov go.

If I have a scenario like that all wrong, then the U.S. had some other sort of leverage that none of us are aware of, or for Scholz it served some kind of domestic political objective that he could benefit from.