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WASHINGTON: The US and Russia carried out their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that freed two dozen people.

Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual American-Russian citizenship, arrived on American soil shortly before midnight for a joyous reunion with their families. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were also there to welcome them.

The trade progressed even as relations between Washington and Moscow were at their lowest level since the Cold War following Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Negotiators in backroom talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February, he put together a deal with 24 people that demanded significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and secured freedom. for a cluster of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.
President Joe Biden trumpeted the exchange, by far the largest in a series of exchanges with Russia, as a diplomatic feat as he welcomed families of the returning Americans to the White House. But the deal, like others before it, reflected an inherent imbalance: The United States and allies surrendered Russians accused or convicted of serious crimes in exchange for Russia releasing journalists, dissidents and others imprisoned by the country's highly politicized justice system on charges seen by the West as trump fat.
“Agreements like this come with tough conversations,” Biden said, adding, “There is nothing more important to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad.”

Under the deal, Russia released Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was jailed in 2023 and convicted in July on espionage charges that he and the US government vehemently denied. His family said in a statement to the newspaper that “we can't wait to give him the biggest hug and see his sweet and brave smile up close.” The paper's editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, called it a “joy-filled day”.

“As we waited for this momentous day, we were determined to be as loud as we could be on Evan's behalf. We are so grateful for all the voices that were raised when his was silent. We can finally say in unison, 'Welcome home, Evan “, she wrote in a letter posted online.

Whelan, a corporate security executive in Michigan who has been jailed since 2018, was also freed on espionage charges that he and Washington have denied; and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian citizen who was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, charges her family and employer have denied.
The dissidents released included Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who served 25 years on treason charges widely seen as politically motivated, as well as several associates of Navalny. Freed Kremlin critics were Oleg Orlov, a veteran human rights activist convicted of discrediting the Russian military, and Ilya Yashin, jailed for criticizing the war in Ukraine.
The Russian side got Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison for killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow's security services. Throughout the negotiations, Moscow had persistently pushed for his release, and Putin himself addressed it.

At the time of Navalny's death, officials were discussing a possible exchange involving Krasikov. But with that prospect erased, senior US officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, made a new effort to encourage Germany to release Krasikov. In the end, a handful of the prisoners Russia released were either German citizens or dual German-Russian citizens.
Russia also received two alleged sleeper agents jailed in Slovenia, as well as three men indicted by federal authorities in the United States, including Roman Seleznev, a convicted hacker and son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence official accused of providing American-made electronics and ammunition for the Russian military. Norway returned an academic arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy; Poland sent back a man they arrested on espionage charges.
“Today is a powerful example of why it's important to have friends in this world,” Biden said.

Overall, six countries released at least one prisoner and a seventh – Turkiye – participated by hosting the site of the swap in Ankara.
Biden placed securing the release of Americans wrongfully held abroad at the top of his foreign policy agenda for six months before he leaves office. In an Oval Office speech discussing his decision to suspend his bid for a second term, Biden said: “We are also working around the clock to bring home Americans who have been unjustly imprisoned around the world.”
At one point Thursday, he grabbed Whelan's sister Elizabeth's hand and said she had practically lived in the White House as the administration tried to free Paul. He then beckoned Kurmasheva's daughter, Miriam, to come closer and took her hand, telling the room it was her 13th birthday. He asked everyone to sing “Happy Birthday” with him. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
The Biden administration has now brought home more than 70 Americans imprisoned in other countries as part of deals that have required the U.S. to give up a wide range of convicted felons, including for drug and gun crimes. The swaps, while hailed with fanfare, have spurred criticism that they encourage future hostage-taking and give adversaries leverage over the United States and its allies.
The US government's top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, has tried to defend the deals by saying that the number of wrongfully imprisoned Americans has actually decreased even as the swaps have increased.
Tucker, the paper's editor-in-chief, acknowledged the debate, writing in a letter: “We know that the US government is acutely aware, as are we, that the only way to prevent an accelerated cycle of arresting innocent people as pawns in cynical geopolitical games is to take remove the incentive for Russia and other nations pursuing the same abhorrent practices.”

Although she called for a change in dynamics, “for now,” she wrote, “we celebrate Evans' return.”
Thursday's exchange of 24 prisoners surpassed a deal involving 14 people struck in 2010. In that exchange, Washington freed 10 Russians living in the United States as sleepers, while Moscow deported four Russians, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent working with British intelligence. He and his daughter were nearly killed in the UK in 2018 by nerve agent poisoning blamed on Russian agents.
Speculation had been growing for weeks that a switch was imminent due to a confluence of unusual events, including the start of a speedy trial against Gershkovich, which Washington viewed as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in maximum security prison.
In a two-day trial that ended in secret the same week as Gershkovich's, Kurmasheva was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employers and US officials rejected. Also in recent days, several other people imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or for their work with Navalny have been moved from prison to undisclosed locations.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023 while on a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was collecting classified information for the United States. The son of Soviet émigrés who settled in New Jersey, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
Gershkovich was named as wrongly imprisoned, as was Whelan, who was arrested in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding.
Whelan, who was serving a 16-year prison sentence, had been excluded from previous high-profile deals involving Russia, including Moscow's April 2022 exchange of jailed Navy veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of a drug-trafficking conspiracy. . That December, the United States released notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been imprisoned on drug charges.
“Paul Whelan is free. Our family is grateful to the United States government for making Paul's freedom a reality,” his family said in a statement.