5 things you should know about the great US-Russia prisoner swap

The White House on Thursday trumpeted what it called a “happy day” when Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan were freed as part of a major prisoner swap with Russia.

The prisoner exchange involved several countries, in addition to the United States and Russia, and comes after Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison in what American authorities called a mock trial. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and later convicted on espionage charges that he and his family denied.

Here are five things you should know about the business.

The biggest exchange since the Cold War

In total, two dozen people and seven countries were involved in Thursday’s complex prisoner exchange.

Russia received eight prisoners detained abroad on various charges and released 16, many of whom were unjustly detained or harshly sentenced for minor offenses.

Three U.S. citizens and one U.S. green card holder were released under the deal: Gershkovich, Whelan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsou Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Among the freed Russians were Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who were detained in Slovenia on espionage charges and linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. The pair pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

Mikhail Mikushin, who was arrested in 2022 in Norway on espionage charges and accused of spying for Russia, was released, as was Roman Seleznev, a Russian hacker and credit card fraudster who was sentenced to 27 years in prison in the US after his arrest in 2014.

Five Germans were also released.

In a statement, President Biden credited Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey with helping secure the deal and called it “a powerful example of why it is vital to have friends in this world who you can trust and who you can trust. Our alliances make Americans safer.”

Biden finalized agreement hours before withdrawing from the 2024 race

Negotiations over the eventual prisoner exchange took place over many months, but officials said the final details of the deal were actually hammered out as Biden weighed a major decision about his own political future.

“One of the things that you all may not know is that on the Sunday that the president announced that he would no longer seek reelection… literally an hour before he released that statement, he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart, urging him to us to take the final steps and get this deal across the finish line,” a senior administration official told reporters.

Biden announced on the afternoon of July 21 that he would not seek a second term in the face of calls from many Democrats for him to step aside. He readily endorsed Vice President Harris to be the Democratic nominee, and she quickly consolidated support within the party.

Some White House officials on Thursday pointed to Biden’s work on the prisoner deal on the day of that announcement as an example of Biden’s willingness to put the presidency ahead of his own political ambitions.

“Proud of Joe Biden every day, but especially today,” campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo posted on social platform X.

The US worked on a deal to free Navalny

One previously unreported element of the negotiations is that the Biden administration was working on a deal that would have included the release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the time of his death in February.

“We were working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexei Navalny, and unfortunately he died,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

“In fact, the same day he died, I saw Evan’s parents and told them that the president was determined to do this even in the face of this tragic news, and that we were going to work day and night to achieve this. day,” he continued. “And so this work continued over the last few months and culminated today.”

Navalny, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in a Russian prison. He was 47 years old.

Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He has been in prison since January 2021, when he returned to Russia after recovering from a poisoning that he blamed on Putin, who denied trying to kill Navalny with a nerve agent.

Germany played a crucial role

Biden spoke repeatedly on Thursday about how the prisoner swap highlighted the importance of alliances, but there was special praise reserved for Germany in particular.

“I particularly owe a great sense of gratitude to the chancellor,” Biden said. “Their demands on me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they initially concluded they could not do because of the person in question.”

The Russians were particularly interested in securing the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany of the murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2021 when German judges said Krasikov acted on orders from Russian authorities.

Biden spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the contours of a possible deal as it developed, and Biden administration officials cited Harris’ role in meeting Scholz face-to-face during the Munich Security Conference in February.

A victory for Biden

With Biden opting not to run for a second term, it was difficult not to view Thursday’s momentous events through the lens of Biden’s legacy and what he wants to accomplish in his final six months in office.

Jake Sullivan played down the idea that Biden felt a particular importance in completing the hostage deal as part of his legacy, saying he was “thinking about it from the families’ perspective.”

“For him, it was very important to get the deal done, but it was less tied to his time in office and more tied to the power and responsibility he had and wanted to exercise to get it done as quickly as possible,” Sullivan said.

But Biden’s top national security adviser also touted the release of American prisoners as something only Biden, with his decades of experience, could have achieved.

“Today’s exchange is a feat of diplomacy that honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden,” Sullivan said.

However, that didn’t stop Republicans from commenting on the criticism. Former President Trump suggested it was a “bad” deal, while his 2024 election running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), argued that the deal was only possible because Russia feared the return of an administration Trump after November.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story