Putin’s prisoner swap shows Russia won’t forget its foreign security operatives.

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin strode along the red carpet between two rows of rifle-toting honor guards and warmly greeted intelligence operatives freed in the biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War.

The Motherland hasn’t forgotten about you for a minute, Putin said, embracing each of them after they walked down the steps of the jetliner that ferried them home.

Putin, who rarely if ever travels to the airport to greet foreign heads of state these days, was delivering a clear, morale-boosting message to his security services: If you get caught, Russia will bring you home.

For the Kremlin, Vadim Krasikov, the hitman imprisoned in Germany for killing a former Chechen militant in Berlin, was perhaps the most important component in the exchange that saw eight Russians swapped for 16 Westerners and Russian dissidents who had been imprisoned in recent years.

Moscow freed American journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and a group of top dissidents. Washington extolled it as a major diplomatic victory. But so did Moscow.