In exchange, Moscow received eight Russians who had been imprisoned in five different countries.
By Erin Banco and Jonathan Lemire
August 2, 2024
Credits @FFHR.CZ
Four Americans and 12 Germans were released from Russia on Thursday in one of the biggest and most complex prisoner swaps in U.S. history.
The Americans included three journalists: Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza, according to U.S. officials. Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive and former Marine, was also released. One of the freed Germans was Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death in Belarus. Several Russian dissidents imprisoned in the country were also released.
In exchange, Moscow received eight Russians who had been imprisoned in five different countries. The biggest prize of the group for Russia was Vadim Krasikov, a Kremlin-connected colonel in Russia’s secret service who was jailed in Germany in 2019 for killing a Chechen dissident.
The deal, which had been in the works for more than a year, marks a major victory for President Joe Biden.
“In the context of the war against Ukraine and the overall degradation of our relations with Russia, securing the release of Americans detained in Russia has been uniquely challenging,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday. “It became clear that the Russians would not agree to the release of these individuals without an exchange that included Vadim Krasikov.”
The agreement was finalized several days before the president announced that he was leaving the ticket, said a senior administration official, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive negotiations.
The U.S. and Russia have for years been at odds over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war. The Biden administration has levied harsh sanctions on Russia in an attempt to blunt its ability to maintain its military campaign. And it has spent billions of dollars propping up Kyiv. The continued detention of Americans only exacerbated those tensions.
The prisoner deal, while momentous, does not signal a massive shift in how the U.S. will approach its relationship with Russia. Hostage pacts and prisoner exchanges, particularly between Washington and Moscow, are often void of political or foreign policy considerations and are viewed as deals of opportunity.
“I think what we have proven willing to do with Russia is hold them accountable for their aggression on the world stage, particularly in Ukraine, while at the same time … working on securing the release of Americans that they are wrongfully detaining,” a second senior administration official said. “I would be cautious in surmising from this that it’s some sort of breakthrough in the relationship” with Russia.
The Americans landed in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday before getting on a plane bound for Washington.
Speculation had risen in recent days that some sort of exchange was imminent, as foreign detainees were reported missing from multiple Russian prisons, with no explanation from the Russian government.
Gershkovich, a 31-year-old Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been a particularly high-profile prisoner as his paper has waged a campaign for his release since he was imprisoned in March 2023 while on a reporting trip in Russia and charged with spying.
Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old reporter in Prague with Radio Free Europe, was arrested seven months later in October 2023 for failing to register as a foreign agent. Kara-Murza, a Russian-born British national and permanent American citizen was arrested in 2022 for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He is a contributor to The Washington Post’s opinion section.
This is the third prisoner swap for the U.S. in two years.
In the most recent deal in 2022, WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer. That same year, the U.S. secured the release of former Marine Trevor Reed for a Russian drug smuggler. The U.S. was unable to free Whelan, 54, in previous exchanges. He was imprisoned in 2018 on accusations of spying.
Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the State Department Roger Carstens told NBC in the weeks following Griner’s release that he spoke to Whelan on the phone after her deal was announced. “I had to spend 30 minutes on the phone telling him what happened,” Carestens said. “I said, ‘Paul, the Russians gave us one deal. It was Brittney, or no one. There was no opportunity to get you out.’”
Soon after the Griner release, the U.S. made another offer to Russia for the release of Whelan, which Moscow rejected.
So in the months that followed, the administration, led by Sullivan, devised a plan to try and formulate a different sort of deal — one that would lead to the release of multiple Americans imprisoned in Russia.
Germany had a number of Russian spies in its possession. Sullivan reached out to his counterparts in Germany in December 2022, the same month Griner was released, then again in April 2023 to inquire about whether it would consider releasing Russian prisoners as a part of the deal.
One man was of particular interest to Putin and therefore to the Americans: Krasikov.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Putin openly hinted that any deal for Gershkovich would be contingent on that of Krasikov, whom Putin did not call by name but referred to as “a patriot.”
Krasikov is known as one of Russia’s top hit men and a part of one of the FSB’s most elite units. His release was the focus of intense debate among senior officials in Washington.
“Nobody’s turning a blind eye to his crimes and his connection to Russian intelligence services,” the senior administration official said, referring to Krasikov. “But look, in order to secure the release of innocent people overseas and innocent Americans, you have to make some tough decisions.”
The biggest hurdle for Sullivan and the Biden administration was getting the Germans on board with agreeing to his release.
In a visit to Washington on Feb. 10, 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Biden that Germany was willing to help the U.S. on the deal.
“The president turned to Jake and said ‘Get it done,’” the second senior administration official recalled.
Then, a week later — on Feb. 16, Alexei Navalny died. Optimism about an agreement with Russia plummeted.
“On that day, honestly, to be frank with you, the team felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails in terms of efforts to get Paul and Evan back home,” the second senior administration official said. “Jake, however, felt differently.”
Sullivan, believing there was still a deal the U.S. could pull off with Germany, instructed his staff at the National Security Council to tweak the terms of the agreement to make it more “politically viable,” that same senior administration official said.
In April 2024, Sullivan drafted a letter to Biden that he could send on to Scholz with the specifics of the U.S. proposal.
Germany agreed to release Krasikov as part of the deal and Sullivan passed the general terms of the agreement through intelligence channels to Moscow.
Over the last two weeks, Russia first sentenced Gershkovich to 16 years in prison and then Kurmasheva to 6½ years. U.S. officials said that was the signal from Russia that it was ready to move forward with a prisoner swamp.
Sullivan made last-minute calls in July to finalize the pact, including from Aspen, Colorado, where he attended the Aspen Security Conference. There were several final points to work out, including figuring out a legal problem in Slovenia that was holding up the release of one of the Russian prisoners. But the pact was all but sealed just before Biden announced July 21 that he was dropping out of the race for president.
Media reports surfaced Wednesday that Whelan and Kara-Murza had disappeared from jail, raising suspicions inside the U.S. government and the halls of Congress that a deal was close.
On Thursday, a plane touched down in Ankara, Turkey. A Turkish television station showed the three Americans stepping off, shaking hands and smiling.
Source: politico.com
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