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WASHINGTON: The United States and Russia completed the largest prisoner swap in history since the collapse of the Soviet Union on Thursday, with Moscow freeing more than two dozen dissidents in a multinational deal, including journalist Evan Gershkovich and Americans Paul Whelan and Vladimir Karamuzha.

Gershkovich, Whelan and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship, arrived on U.S. soil just before midnight and were greeted by their families by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The deal came despite relations between Washington and Moscow at their lowest point since the Cold War, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At one point in back-channel talks, negotiators sought a swap that included Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February they ultimately struck a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and freedom for journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.
President Joe Biden touted the exchange, the largest in a series of swaps with Russia, as a diplomatic feat and welcomed the families of the returning Americans to the White House. But the deal, like others before it, reflected an inherent imbalance: The United States and its allies gave up Russians accused or convicted of serious crimes in exchange for Russia releasing journalists, dissidents and others imprisoned by the country’s highly politicized legal system on trumped-up Western charges.
“These deals involve tough decisions,” Biden said. “Nothing is more important than protecting the American people at home and abroad,” he added.

Under the deal, Russia will free Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was jailed in 2023 and convicted in July on espionage charges that he and the U.S. government vehemently denied. “We look forward to giving him the biggest hug and seeing his sweet, brave smile up close,” his family said in a statement released by the newspaper. The paper’s editor, Emma Tucker, called it “a joyous day.”

“While waiting for this big day, we are determined to scream for Evan as loud as we can. We are so grateful for all the voices that have been heard when his voice was silent. Finally, we can say with one voice, ‘Evan, welcome home,’” she wrote in a letter posted online.

Also released was Whelan, a corporate security executive in Michigan who had been imprisoned since 2018 on espionage charges, which both he and Washington have denied. And Alsu Kurmaseva, a journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is a dual U.S.-Russian citizen who was convicted in July of spreading disinformation about the Russian military. Her family and employers have denied the charges.
The dissidents who were released included several associates of Navalny and Kara-Murza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Kremlin critic who was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The Kremlin critics who were released included veteran human rights activist Oleg Orlov, convicted of discrediting the Russian military, and Ilya Yashin, who was jailed for criticizing the war in Ukraine.
The Russian side brought in Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years ago, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services. Throughout the negotiations, Moscow strongly demanded his release, and Putin himself raised the issue.

At the time of Navalny’s death, officials were discussing a possible exchange that would include Krasikov. But as that possibility faded, senior U.S. officials, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, made new moves to encourage Germany to release Krasikov. After all, a small number of the prisoners released by Russia were German nationals or dual German-Russian citizens.
Russia also accepted two undercover agents imprisoned in Slovenia and three men indicted by U.S. federal authorities, including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoshchenok, a Russian intelligence agent accused of supplying U.S. electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway returned an academic arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, and Poland returned a man detained on espionage charges.
“Today is a powerful example of why it’s important to have friends in this world,” Biden said.

In all, six countries released at least one prisoner, and a seventh, Turkey, participated in hosting an exchange site in Ankara.
Biden has made the release of Americans wrongfully detained overseas a top foreign policy priority in his last six months in office. “We are also working around the clock to bring back Americans wrongfully detained around the world,” Biden said in an Oval Office speech discussing his decision to drop out of a second term.
At one point Thursday, he held the hand of Whelan's sister, Elizabeth, and said she had been living in the White House while the administration tried to free Paul. Then he motioned for Kurmasheva's daughter, Miriam, to come closer, took her hand and told her it was her 13th birthday in the room. He asked everyone to sing “Happy Birthday” with him. She wiped tears from her eyes.
The Biden administration has returned more than 70 Americans detained in other countries as part of a deal that calls for the handing over to the U.S. of criminals with a wide range of convictions, including drug and weapons offenses. The exchange was celebrated with much fanfare, but it has also drawn criticism that it encourages future hostage-taking and allows adversaries to exert influence over the U.S. and its allies.
The U.S. government's chief hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, defended the deal, saying the number of Americans wrongfully detained had actually decreased, while hostage exchanges had increased.
Tucker, the journal’s editor, acknowledged the controversy, writing in the letter: “We recognize that the U.S. government understands that the only way to stop the accelerating cycle of arresting innocent people as puppets in a cynical geopolitical game, as we have, is to remove the incentives for other countries to pursue the same abhorrent practices as Russia.”

She called for a change in dynamic, but wrote, “For now,” “we're celebrating Evan's return.”
Thursday’s 24-person prisoner swap surpassed a deal made in 2010 that included 14. In that swap, Washington released 10 Russians living in the U.S. as undercover agents, and Moscow expelled four Russians, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent working with British intelligence. He and his daughter were nearly killed in Britain in 2018 by a nerve gas poisoning blamed on Russian agents.
Speculation that a swap was imminent had been brewing for weeks, with a series of unusual events, including Gershkovich’s surprisingly quick trial, which Washington dismissed as a hoax. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
In a secret trial that ended in two days, the same week as Gershkovic’s, Kurmasheva was found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian military, a charge that her family, employers and U.S. officials have denied. Several other figures jailed in Russia for opposing the war in Ukraine or working with Navalny have also been moved from prison to undisclosed locations in recent days.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, while on a mission to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg to report. Authorities claimed, without providing evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the United States. The son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for the Moscow Times newspaper and was hired by the Journal in 2022.
Gershkovic was designated as wrongfully detained, and Whelan was also designated as wrongfully detained. Whelan was detained after traveling to Russia for a wedding in December 2018.
Whelan, who was serving a 16-year sentence, was excluded from previous high-profile Russian-related deals, including the April 2022 deal in which Moscow swapped convicted Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko for imprisoned Marine veteran Trevor Reed on drug trafficking charges. That December, the U.S. freed notorious arms trafficker Victor Boot in exchange for WNBA star Brittany Griner, who had been jailed on drug charges.
“Paul Whelan is free, and our family is grateful to the United States government for making Paul’s freedom a reality,” his family said in a statement.