Putin welcomes Russians freed in prisoner swap as heroes loyal to the Motherland

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin gave Russian nationals freed in an historic prisoner exchange with the West a hero's welcome on Thursday as they stepped off a plane in Moscow, promising them state awards and a conversation about their futures.

Eight people were returned to Russia as part of the biggest East-West prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War, including Vadim Krasikov, a hitman convicted by a German court of killing a former Chechen militant in a Berlin park, and two men convicted of cyber crimes in the United States, Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznyov.

Among those Moscow also got back: a Russian family, the Dultsevs, including their two children, whom a court in Slovenia convicted of pretending to be Argentinians in order to spy on the EU and NATO member state. The couple are thought to be "illegals" - deep-cover agents trained to impersonate foreigners, who spend years living abroad in their cover identities.

In return, U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among those released by Moscow in a complex deal negotiated in secrecy for more than a year.

Putin, a former KGB officer and ex-head of Russia's FSB security service, met the eight returnees at a Moscow airport and hugged them or shook their hands, giving some of them bouquets of flowers as they came off the plane onto a red carpet flanked by a Kremlin honour guard.

The first to disembark, wearing a baseball cap and a tracksuit top, was Krasikov, the hitman, whom Putin hugged.

Inside the airport building, Putin, who looked visibly pleased, told the returnees:

"First of all, I would like to congratulate you all on your return to the Motherland. Now I would like to address those of you who have a direct connection to military service. I want to thank you for your loyalty to your oath and your duty to your Motherland, which has never forgotten you for a moment.

"All of you will be presented with state awards. I will see you again, we will talk about your future."

Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the domestic FSB intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, and Defence Minister Andrei Belousov were also at the airport to welcome the group.

Earlier on Thursday, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, commenting on the prisoner exchange, said that traitors to his country should rot and die in prison, but that it was more useful for Moscow to get its own people home.

"And let the traitors now feverishly adopt new names and actively disguise themselves under witness protection programmes," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn in Moscow Additional reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Leslie Adler and Rosalba O'Brien)