Russia has freed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan as part of an extensive prisoner swap between Moscow and the West, US President Joe Biden has confirmed.
“Today, three American citizens and one American green-card holder who were unjustly imprisoned in Russia are finally coming home: Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy.”
The West obtained the release of 16 people from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian political prisoners, according to the United States statement.
Biden later confirmed that the released prisoners had made it from Russia to Turkey and would soon be on their way to the US. “The families and I were able to speak to them on the telephone from the Oval Office,” he said separately.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) welcomed the release of Gershkovich after he was handed to US authorities in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“We are overwhelmed with relief and elated for Evan and his family,” WSJ publisher Almar Latour and editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement. “Unfortunately many journalists remain unjustly imprisoned in Russia and around the world.”
Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 and sentenced to 16 years in jail last month on spying charges. Whelan was detained in 2020 on espionage charges, as well. The US has deemed both prisoners “wrongfully detained”.
The deal was mediated by Turkey. “Our organisation has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) said earlier in a statement.
Security sources said the deal involved 26 prisoners overall. Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said the operation was “a very extensive and complicated prisoner swap” involving several countries and a large number of prisoners. “That’s why it has been dealt [with] very delicately and carefully,” Koseoglu said.
Who was released?
Russian dissidents and opposition figures Kara-Murza, Andrei Pivovarov, Lilia Chanysheva, Oleg Orlov, Ilya Yashin, Kevin Lik and Ksenia Fadeyeva were released as part of the deal, The Washington Post reported.
Alexandra Skochilenko, a Russian artist who was sentenced to seven years in prison over an anti-war protest, was also freed.
Moreover, German-Russian political scientist Dieter Voronin was released alongside Patrick Schobel, a German national who was arrested on drug charges.
For its part, Belarus – a close Russia ally – freed Rico Krieger, a German citizen previously convicted of “terrorism” charges.
Russia got back Vadim Krasikov, a Russian jailed in Germany for assassinating a former Chechen rebel commander in 2019.
According to US media outlets, the US freed Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman convicted in a “hack-to-trade” fraud scheme; Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian legislator jailed for involvement in a cyberattack; and Vadim Konoshchenok, a Russian security official arrested in Estonia and extradited to the US.
Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, a Russian couple who were imprisoned in Slovenia on spying charges, were also released.
Pablo Gonzalez, a Russian-Spanish journalist, was freed by Poland. CNN identified Gonzalez as Pavel Rubtsov, saying he is a Russian spy.
Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin, a Russian charged with spying in Norway, was released as well.
‘Spurious charges’
In the West, many press rights advocates welcomed the deal.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based watchdog, welcomed the release of Gershkovich and Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in prison on July 19, the same day as Gershkovich, for violating Russian laws on “military fakes” in connection with a book she edited about Ukraine.
“Evan and Alsu have been apart from their families for far too long,” CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement. “They were detained and sentenced on spurious charges intended to punish them for their journalism and stifle independent reporting.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the release of dual Russian-British dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been jailed on treason charges for 25 years in a Siberian penal colony.
“I welcome the release of a number of prisoners held in Russia … We will continue to call on Russia to uphold freedom of political expression,” Starmer said on X.
The US invariably referred to the cases of Gershkovich and Whelan side by side, saying both were being used as bargaining chips by Moscow, meaning it considered the cases politically motivated and was committed to getting them home.
Germany said its release of Krasikov, a convicted murderer, as part of the prisoner swap with Russia was “not an easy decision”.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said the decision to send Krasikov back to Russia was informed by Berlin’s duty towards German citizens and solidarity with the US.
Hebestreit also called on “the Russian and Belarussian leadership to release all unjustly imprisoned political detainees”.
Biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history
With Thursday’s deal, the US and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history.
The deal was the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the US in the past two years, but the first to require significant concessions from other countries, with seven nations agreeing to give up prisoners.
A previous prisoner exchange between Washington and Moscow took place in December 2022, when American basketball player Brittney Griner returned to the US after serving 10 months in a Russian prison. She was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Griner was arrested at a Russian airport earlier that year and she later pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the discovery of cannabis-derived oil cartridges in her luggage.
She was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of possessing and smuggling drugs. Griner said she made an “honest mistake” and had not meant to break the law.
Relations between the US and Russia have remained tense especially following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then the US and its allies have imposed sanctions on thousands of Russian targets, but Russia’s export-focused $2.2-trillion economy has proven more resilient than the West had anticipated.