Moreover, in October 1962, the nuclear arms race had not yet reached full stride — the weapons possessed by the two nuclear-armed adversaries then pale in quantity, quality and lethality to the arsenals that exist today.

These sanctions, which are designed to punish Russia, have failed to do so. In fact, they've boomeranged back on Europe. And Europe continues to move forward, putting more sanctions into more sanctions, all the while Russia gets stronger economically.

The exchange that occurred on August 1 appears to have been a deal hashed out between the Russian secret services and the American CIA.

This implies there was a special relationship between him [Kara-Murza] and the US government that maybe the US government doesn't want to talk about in public. Kara-Murza appears to have been on the CIA payroll as well.

I don't think US-Russia relations are going to be in a position where such a prisoner swap could have occurred in the next year, maybe the next two years. So it needed to happen now, and that's why it did. The largest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War. Who knows what the future will hold... Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend of good relations, but probably not.

The US provided no evidence whatsoever to back up these claims, and it appears that what the US was doing was signaling its dissatisfaction with the treaty that, while bilateral in nature, allowed China, for instance, to have intermediate-range missiles. Rather than negotiate with the Chinese directly, the United States withdrew from the treaty. The Russians didn't overreact. They were unhappy with this turn of events, but they said so long as the United States doesn't deploy intermediate-range systems into Europe, Russia's not going to build new intermediate systems nor deploy them.

Now the United States is talking about deploying a new system, the two-stage Dark Eagle intermediate-range system with hypersonic reentry vehicles. And the Russians have said enough is enough. So now Russia is talking about not only starting to build their own intermediate nuclear systems but deploying them. We're back to square one. The world is a much more dangerous place today because of the actions of the United States.

Both sides will move to shape the narratives behind this exchange in a manner which shows them in the best light—interviews, books, movies, etc.