Aside from the mysterious disappearances, a number of other, seemingly separate events over the past days have fuelled suspicion that something important is brewing.
On Tuesday, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in a surprise move, pardoned Rico Krieger, a German citizen and the first Westerner to receive a death sentence.
A day later, on Wednesday, Slovenia convicted a Russian couple of espionage, and ordered them to be expelled.
In a third notable event, a number of high-profile Russian citizens held in U.S. prisons, many of them linked to the Russian government, appeared to have been removed from the American federal prisoner database.
Among them were Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok, Vladislav Klyushin, Roman Seleznev, and Alexander Vinnik, who are all serving time in U.S. prisons on various serious charges.
Speaking to Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti, Vinnik’s lawyer neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of a prisoner swap involving his client, saying he could not comment on it “until it takes place.”
