(Bloomberg) -- US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed home Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and other Americans freed in the largest prisoner swap with Russia since the Cold War.
Biden took a salute from Whelan before embracing him, and clasped Gershkovich and fellow journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who holds dual Russian and US citizenship, after their plane landed just before midnight at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. They were part of a deal with Russia that included a prized assassin sought by President Vladimir Putin.
The swap, which took place on the airport tarmac in Ankara, included two dozen people, 16 going to the West and eight being returned to Russia. Among them were other American citizens as well as Russians convicted of crimes and imprisoned in the US, Germany, Poland, Norway and Slovenia.
“The toughest call on this one for other countries was that I asked them to do some things that were against their immediate self interest,” Biden said afterward. “And really very difficult to do, particularly Germany and Slovenia.”
Key to the deal was the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a Chechen separatist in a Berlin park. German authorities had long resisted including him in any exchange because of the brazen nature of his crime, but Putin had made his release a top priority.
In addition to Gershkovich, who was arrested in March last year while on a reporting assignment in Russia and later convicted of espionage — charges he and the Journal reject – Russia also let go Whelan, who was jailed in 2018 and later convicted on spying charges he denies. The US categorized both men as unlawfully detained and had been seeking their release.
“Now, their brutal ordeal is over and they’re free,” Biden said earlier at a White House appearance with family members of some of the released prisoners. “The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship.”
Russia also freed Kurmasheva, who was convicted last month under the Kremlin’s strict wartime censorship laws.
Such prisoner swaps are one of the few remaining areas of diplomatic cooperation between the US and Russia after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine poisoned relations. US officials accuse the Kremlin of taking Americans hostage to win the release of Russian agents and others held in US prisons. Moscow denies that.
“Not since the Cold War has there been a similar number of individuals exchanged in this way, and there has never, so far as we know, been an exchange involving so many countries,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said. “It’s the culmination of many rounds of complex, painstaking negotiations.”
US officials described the swap as a success of their long-running efforts to win the release of Americans unjustly held abroad. Moscow insisted on the release of Krasikov in exchange for Gershkovich and Kurmasheva, the US said.
“The German government did not take this decision lightly,” Steffen Hebestreit, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s chief spokesman, said in a statement Thursday. “The state’s interest in enforcing the prison sentence of a convicted criminal was balanced against the freedom, physical well-being and — in some cases — ultimately the lives of innocent people imprisoned in Russia.”
The exchange represents a major victory for Putin, who’d repeatedly pressed for Krasikov’s release in the face of opposition from Germany. By freeing the killer, Putin, a former KGB officer, showed his security service agents and others working for the Kremlin abroad that he won’t abandon them and will do whatever is necessary to secure their return, even amid the greatest confrontation since the Cold War between Russia and the West over his invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin wanted a deal before the elections because after that, all the meticulous preparatory work involving several governments could have been buried,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consultancy R.Politik, referring to the November US presidential vote. “For Putin this will be confirmation that the Americans can be flexible and pragmatic when they need something.”
Putin previously demonstrated his commitment to get his agents out with the December 2022 release of the arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “merchant of death,” who’d been sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in US prison. The Biden administration freed him in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was given nine years by a Russian court after customs officials at a Moscow airport found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage in February that year.
Putin said in June that Russian and US intelligence services were in contact and that the Biden administration was taking energetic steps to secure Gershkovich’s release.
Former President Donald Trump, who once predicted Gershkovich would not be released unless he won the November election, criticized the deal as too favorable to Russia.
“Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!” Trump posted on his social media site.
Asked about Trump’s claim that he could have freed the wrongfully detained Americans without giving up anything in exchange, Biden replied, “why didn’t he do it when he was president?”
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The latest exchange, which Turkish officials said saw two minors sent back to Russia along with the adults, included the release to the West of a number of Russian opposition figures, who’ve faced an intensifying Kremlin crackdown in recent years. Earlier this year, the two sides were close to an agreement that would have seen the release of Alexey Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, but he died suddenly in prison before it could take place.
The swap included Kremlin critics Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, as well as Oleg Orlov, co-chairman of the Memorial human rights group that jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Russian authorities also released three other jailed dissidents, pro-democracy activists Liliya Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva and artist Alexandra Skochilenko.
One American who wasn’t freed is Marc Fogel, a 63-year-old history teacher in Moscow who was sentenced to 14 years in 2022 after a Russian court convicted him of smuggling cannabis. He said he was carrying marijuana for medical purposes. US officials said efforts were continuing to secure his release.
In Thursday’s swap, Russia also released Kevin Lik, a dual German and Russian national, who was serving a four-year prison sentence for treason for an act he allegedly committed when he was 16. As part of the deal, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s closest ally, on Tuesday pardoned a German citizen, Rico Krieger, who’d been convicted and sentenced to death in June for “mercenary activity” on behalf of Ukraine.
The US released several Russians convicted on a variety of criminal charges. Among them was Vladislav Klyushin, a Kremlin-linked technology consultant serving a 9-year sentence for insider trading, Roman Seleznev, the son of a prominent Russian politician who was serving a 27-year sentence for cybercrime, and Vadim Konoshchenok, jailed on suspicion of violating US sanctions against sending military technologies to Russia. The US alleged Konoshchenok had ties to Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Polish authorities released Pavel Rubtsov, jailed on espionage charges, as part of the deal, while Norway let go Mikhail Mikushin, an academic who was accused of spying.
In Slovenia, meanwhile, two Russians detained as spies in 2022 pleaded guilty at a closed trial in Ljubljana and were released as part of the deal.
--With assistance from Alexey Anishchuk.
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