Kuznetsov was finally released on 27 April 1979, and joined his wife in Israel. Mark Dymshits was released at the same time, along with three other prominent Soviet dissidents, Aleksandr Ginzburg, Valentin Moroz, and Georgy Vins. The release of the five dissidents came after long negotiations as part of a prisoner exchange for two Soviet foreign intelligence officers, Rudolf Chernyaev and Valdik Enger. The Soviet operatives, who were employed at the time at the United Nations Secretariat, had been sentenced in a U.S. federal court to 50 years in prison, in October 1978, following their arrest in New Jersey the previous May, while collecting an agent's report from a secret cache (a co-conspirator, Vladimir Zinyakin, an attaché of the Soviet mission to the UN, had diplomatic immunity, and was not charged).