The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, the White House said.
Astonishing in scope, the trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Watch NBC6 free wherever you are
“Now, their brutal ordeal is over and they’re free,” President Joe Biden said from the White House with the families of newly-released U.S. prisoners at his side. “Moments ago, the families and I were able to speak to them on the telephone from the Oval Office. They’re out of Russia. Earlier today, they were flown to Turkey, and soon there will be wheels up on their way home to see their families.”
Get local news you need to know to start your day with NBC 6's News Headlines newsletter.
The deal was the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the past two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries, with seven nations agreeing to give up 24 prisoners. Biden trumpeted the deal as a “diplomatic feat."
“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” Biden said.
“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, so many close U.S. partners and allies working together,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said to reporters on Thursday.
But the welcome news was still sure to spark concerns over the imbalance of the deal — with Russia freeing journalists, dissidents and others convicted in a highly politicized court system in exchange for people the West regards as rightfully charged — and whether it gives foreign actors seeking leverage over the U.S. an incentive to take prisoners.
Under the deal, Russia released Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was jailed in 2023 and convicted in July of espionage charges that he and the U.S. government vehemently denied. His family said in a statement released by 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 “joyous day.”
“While 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.
The Wall Journal Street's top editor Emma Tucker told the staff in an email: “I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same.”
In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.
Capus said the broadcaster welcomed ’’news of Alsu’s imminent release and are grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia.” Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.
US & World
Biden, at his appearance in the White House with the families, led the room in singing "Happy Birthday" to one of Kurmasheva's daughters, Miriam Butorin, who turns 13 on Friday.
"Now, she gets to celebrate with her mom. That’s what this is all about, families able to be together again, but they should have been all along," Biden said during his address.
The deal is the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
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.”
The dissidents released included Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer serving 25 years on charges of treason widely seen as politically motivated, 11 political prisoners being held in Russia, including associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and a German national arrested in Belarus.
Russia also got back 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, according to a statement from the Turkish government.
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.
In the News
Thursday’s swap of 24 prisoners surpassed a deal involving 14 people that was struck in 2010. In that exchange, Washington freed 10 Russians living in the U.S. as sleepers, while Moscow deported four Russians, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent working with British intelligence. He and his daughter in 2018 were near
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 that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.
Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.
U.S. officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.
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 is serving a 16-year prison sentence.
Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Reed and Griner.
According to an account in The Wall Street Journal of the negotiations to free Gershkovich, he was required to officially request clemency from Putin.
"In the formal high Russian he had honed over 16 months imprisonment, the Journal’s Russia correspondent filled the page," read the Journal's article. "The last line submitted a proposal of his own: After his release, would Putin be willing to sit down for an interview?"
Eric Tucker, Dasha Litvinova and Matthew Lee from The Associated Press contributed to this article.
