When Ukraine agreed to hand over Viktor Medvedchuk in September 2022 in exchange for more than 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war, it told you something about both sides. Kyiv was willing to part with a man it had charged with treason in order to get Mariupol’s defenders home. Moscow was willing to pay 200-for-1 to retrieve an ageing political operator whose formal career inside Ukraine was already over.(The Kyiv Independent)

That asymmetry is the starting point.