Canadian-born ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and American Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich were among 16 prisoners freed by Russia Thursday after the U.S. and Moscow secured their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history.
Eight prisoners were returned to Russia, including people convicted of serious crimes in the West, in exchange for other journalists and dissidents the West said were unjustly held by Moscow on false charges.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident and Pulitzer Prize winner who the White House said holds an American green card, were also being released.
“It’s a good day,” U.S. President Joe Biden said at the White House with family members of the freed Americans standing behind him.
He said Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, and Turkey were involved in the complex negotiations leading up to the exchange.
“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” he said. “A friend you can trust, work with, and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this.”
This photo combination shows, in the centre, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and clockwise from top left are Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, corporate security executive and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Lilia Chanysheva, former coordinator of regional offices of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Memorial Human Rights Centre Oleg Orlov, artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district Ilya Yashin, government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service Alsu Kurmasheva and former head of Open Russia movement Andrei Pivovarov. (AP Photo).
The scope of the deal was notable given relations between Washington and Moscow are at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Asked if the swap might open a door for Biden to speak to Putin directly, Biden responded simply: “I don’t need to speak with Putin.”
White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who teared up while detailing the prisoner exchange at a press briefing, said there was “no link” between the deal and any diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the release of the prisoners “is an immense relief.”
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“They were unjustly detained by Russia and their freedom is long overdue,” he wrote on social media. “These men and women are rejoining their families and loved ones. But the fight for free political expression in Russia is far from over.”
The exchange was the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War. In the last major exchange in 2010, 14 prisoners were exchanged.
In December 2022, Russia traded U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced to nine years for having vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S.
Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”
“Through many difficult conversations over the past several years, I told the families of those wrongfully detained in Russia that we would not forget them,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“I know there are many times over those years where they have wondered if our work would ever bear fruit. But I also know that they never gave up hope, and neither did we.”
Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich on espionage charges that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the U.S. have also said were false and trumped up, and he was serving a 16-year prison sentence.
In a trial that concluded in two days in secrecy in the same week as Gershkovich’s, Kurmasheva was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employer and U.S. officials rejected.
Whelan and Kara-Murza had suddenly disappeared from view in recent days, according to their lawyers. At least seven Russian dissidents had been unexpectedly moved from their prisons.
Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including the one that secured Griner’s release and an April 2022 swap by Moscow of imprisoned Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
Turkey confirmed the Russian side got Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.
Russia also received two alleged sleeper agents who were jailed in Slovenia, as well as three men charged by federal authorities in the U.S., including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and the son of a Russian lawmaker and Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence operative accused of providing American-made electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway returned an academic arrested on suspicions of being a Russian spy, and Poland also sent back a man it detained.
Dissidents inside Russia whose supporters say they have been told that they have been suddenly moved in recent days include human rights activist Oleg Orlov and Daniil Krinari, convicted of secretly cooperating with foreign governments.
In the West, the dissidents are seen by governments and activists as wrongfully detained political prisoners. All have, for different reasons, been designated by Moscow as dangerous extremists.
A Slovenian court on Wednesday sentenced two Russians to time served for espionage and using fake identities, and said they would be deported, the state news agency STA reported, a move a Slovenian TV channel said was part of the wider exchange.
—With files from the Associated Press and Reuters