Burkov was arrested in 2015 on an international warrant while he was visiting Israel, and over the ensuing four years the Russian government aggressively sought to keep him from being extradited to the United States. When Israeli authorities turned down requests to send him back to Russia — supposedly to face separate hacking charges there — the Russians then imprisoned a young Israeli woman on trumped-up drug charges in a bid to trade prisoners.

As the news outlet Haaretz reported in October, Naama Issachar was arrested while changing planes in Russia on her way home from a yoga course in India. Russian police said they found approximately 10 grams of marijuana in Issachar’s bag. Issachar denied smuggling drugs, saying she had not sought to enter Russia during her layover and had no access to her luggage during her brief stay in the Russian airport.

Haaretz noted that the Russian government pressed Israel to exchange Burkov for Issachar. When Israel’s supreme court cleared the way for Burkov’s extradition to the United States, Issachar was found guilty of drug smuggling and sentenced to 7.5 years in jail.