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WASHINGTON: The United States and Russia completed the largest prisoner exchange in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing two dozen people in a multinational deal, including dissidents including journalist Ivan Gershkovich and fellow Americans Paul Whelan, Vladimir Kara-Murza. for free.

Journalists Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsou Kurmsheva, who hold dual US and Russian citizenship, arrived on American soil just before midnight for a joyous reunion with their families. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also reached there to welcome them.

Trade opened even as relations between Washington and Moscow were at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Negotiators at the Bacchanal talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February eventually cobbled together a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and preserved independence. For groups of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.
President Joe Biden trumpeted the largest-ever exchange in a series of swaps with Russia as a diplomatic achievement as he welcomed the families of returning Americans to the White House. But the deal, like others before it, reflects an inherent imbalance: The United States and allies released Russians charged or convicted of serious crimes in exchange for the release of journalists, dissidents and others jailed by the country's highly politicized legal system on charges seen by Russia. West as trump-up.
“These deals come with tough calls,” Biden said, adding: “There is nothing more important to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad.”

Under the deal, Russia released Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, who was jailed in 2023 and convicted in July on espionage charges that he and the US government vehemently deny. “We can't wait to give her the biggest hugs and see her sweet and brave smile up close,” her family said in a statement released by the newspaper. The paper's editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, called it a “happy day”.

“As we waited for this momentous day, we were determined to be as loud as we could be for Ivan. We are so grateful for all the voices raised while he was silent. We can finally say with one voice, 'Welcome home, Ivan,'” she said online. She wrote in the posted letter.

Whalen, a Michigan corporate security executive who has been in prison since 2018, was also freed on espionage charges he and Washington have denied; And Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual American-Russian citizen convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, has been denied by his family and employer.
Among the freed dissidents were 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 of Navalny's associates. Freed Kremlin critics included Oleg Orlov, a veteran human rights campaigner convicted of defaming the Russian military, and Ilya Yasin, jailed for criticizing the war in Ukraine.
The Russian side received Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a former Chechen rebel in a park in Berlin two years ago, at the behest of Moscow's security services. During the negotiations, Moscow was pressing for his release, Putin himself took it up.

At the time of Navalny's death, officials were discussing a possible exchange of Krasikov. But after that possibility faded, senior US officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, renewed efforts to encourage Germany to release Krasikov. Finally, a handful of prisoners released by Russia were either German citizens or dual German-Russian citizens.
Russia also had two alleged sleeper agents jailed in Slovenia, as well as three men indicted by federal authorities in the US, including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoschenok, a suspected Russian intelligence operative. Providing US-made electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway returns an academic arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy; Poland has extradited a man arrested on espionage charges.
“Today is a powerful example of why it's so important to have friends in this world,” Biden said.

All told, six countries released at least one detainee and a seventh – Turkey – participated by hosting a venue for the swap in Ankara.
Biden kept securing the release of Americans wrongfully held overseas at the top of the foreign policy agenda for six months before leaving office. In an Oval Office address discussing his decision to drop his bid for a second term, Biden said, “We are also working around the clock to bring home Americans who are unjustly detained around the world.”
At one point Thursday, he held the hand of Whalen's sister, Elizabeth, and she was practically living 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 and told the room it was her 13th birthday. He asked everyone to sing 'Happy Birthday' with him. She wiped tears from her eyes.
The Biden administration has now brought home more than 70 Americans detained in other countries, requiring the U.S. to release a wide range of convicted felons, including drug and weapons offenses. The swaps, though celebrated with fanfare, have prompted criticism that they encourage future hostage-takers and give the US and its allies an advantage over adversaries.
The US government's top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, has sought to defend the deal, saying it has reduced the number of Americans wrongfully detained.
Tucker, the journal's editor-in-chief, acknowledged the debate, writing in a letter: “We know the U.S. government is as keenly aware as we are that the only way to stop the rapid cycle of arresting innocent people as freaks is to remove incentives for Russia and other nations to play geopolitical games. which follows the same abominable practice.”

Although he called for a change in the dynamic, “for now,” he wrote, “we are celebrating Ivan's return.”
Thursday's 24-prisoner swap surpasses a 2010 deal with 14 others. In that exchange, Washington freed 10 Russians living in the US as sleepers, while Moscow deported four Russians, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent who worked with British intelligence. In 2018 she and her daughter were nearly killed in Britain by nerve agent poisoning blamed on Russian agents.
Speculation that a swap was imminent had been rife for weeks due to a confluence of unusual developments, including the initial expedited trial for Gershkovich, whom Washington considered a fraud. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison.
In a trial that, like Gershkovich's, ended in secret over two days a week, Kurmsheva was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employers and U.S. officials denied. In recent days, several other people imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or working with Navalny have been moved from prisons to undisclosed locations.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Officials claimed, without providing any evidence, that he was collecting classified information for the U.S. The son of a Soviet émigré who settled in New Jersey, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
Gershkovich was wrongfully detained, just as Whelan was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding.
Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence, was excluded from previous high-profile deals involving Russia, including Moscow's April 2022 swap of jailed Marine veteran Trevor Reid for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was convicted in a drug-trafficking conspiracy. . That December, the U.S. freed notorious arms dealer Victor Bout in exchange for WNBA star Brittany Griner, who had been jailed 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.