Russia doesn't hand over its own citizens to US. Period. The only inconvenience to these 12 people is that they probably should avoid traveling to any country that extradites to the US, but that's about it.
Is everyone really that confused by this?
Mueller has been indicting Russians all along. It's not some great mystery why he's doing it.
Trump and the other Republicans have made it clear that they are willing to stoop to anything to interfere with the investigation, including pardoning people. So Mueller indicts one Russian and one American together as much as possible. That way, even if Trump pardons the American, the investigation doesn't go away. The only way Trump can make the investigation stop through pardons is to pardon a whole bunch of Russian spies, which would make his treason obvious even to many Republican voters.
Trump got this far by convincing the Republican base that there was no treason and that the investigation is an unfair witch hunt just like they did to Hillary with the Benghazi investigations. But if Trump pardons a bunch of Russian spies in order to terminate the investigation, it will be a lot harder to convince Republican voters that he's not working with the Russians.
It's basically a measure to prevent obstruction of justice via pardon.
It's also how a thorough investigation works. A complicated large investigation is actually a series of smaller more focused investigations that refer to each other, much like the various footnotes in a scientific paper lead to other experiments. A lot of people don't seem to understand this or are conservatives purposefully misleading the public on how this works. Eventually, the other investigations are going to make allegations and leverage evidence against Americans, and it will be important to know who they were conspiring with, and what they did with Russians in those efforts, even if those Russians never come to trial. It's the chain of evidence. The investigations each tell a small part of the story, with all of them telling the entire story together, like chapters within a book. Just because the majority of your readers are only interested in certain characters, doesn't mean you leave the backstory out of the book.
It's kind of important that if you're conducting an investigation about conspiring with the Russians, that you may wish to include some Russians. This isn't difficult.
Mueller just hired even more
prosecutors. This investigation will take a lot of time yet.
One of two things will happen when Mueller turns in his report to Congress concerning his investigation.
It will be non-specific, easily squirmed through with lots of holes.
It will be pretty airtight, making allegations with lots of supporting evidence, concerning many members of the administration which may or may not include Trump himself. If the evidence is so damning as to cause the GOP more political trouble than they would ever receive for simply impeaching Trump or watching half his administration end up in prison, then they will do so. Some of this will also rely on the American people and what they are willing to put up with as far as corruption is concerned. We know the Trump humpers will willingly fall off a cliff with Trump if given the opportunity, but what about the rest of us?
So far, if you make bets on the American public, you are losing, and badly.
To me, the best thing that could happen is if the investigation shows Trump to be a long-standing Russian resource that actively worked to defraud the US election, with enough evidence to send several major players in his administration to jail. Then, have the administration and the GOP at large voted out of office in a massive sweep. Personally, I think the Obama administration dropped the ball big time on this as well, but at least he attempted to make a bipartisan stand to warn of the problem to the public before the election. McConnell nixed it, the same McConnel that stole the Justice seat, and the same McConnel that has refused to pass legislation to protect the investigation. The same GOP that knows of all of this yet puts on a show like they did the other day, "questioning" the FBI. Sickening, really.
So it is meaningful but in opposite way for them.
