Less than three weeks ago, Vladimir Putin claimed to “know nothing” about Laurent Vinatier. Yet on Thursday, January 8, it was the Russian leader who pardoned the 49-year-old French researcher who had been imprisoned in Russia since his arrest in Moscow on June 6, 2024. For nearly 19 months of detention, the fate of this specialist on the post-Soviet region, initially prosecuted for failing to register as a “foreign agent” and later on espionage charges, was the subject of numerous behind-the-scenes negotiations.

“Our compatriot is free and back in France. I share the relief of his family and loved ones,” wrote French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday afternoon on the social network X. Just minutes before this confirmation from the president, an announcement and then a short video published in Moscow by the Federal Security Service (FSB, one of the successors to the KGB) had revealed the exchange between Vinatier and a Russian basketball player and hacker held in France, Daniil Kasatkin. Macron did not confirm the swap. Putin, for his part, made no comment.

To understand the chain of events that led to this outcome, one must go back to Putin’s year-end press conference on December 19, 2025. In the middle of this four-and-a-half-hour televised monologue, the Moscow correspondent for French broadcaster TF1-LCI asked the Russian president a question. The journalist had made it known in advance that he wanted to question Putin about the Vinatier case. At first, he was ignored by Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov. But the Russian leader personally chose to answer him.

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