The White House on Thursday trumpeted as a “joyful day” the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan as part of a larger prisoner swap with Russia.
The prisoner swap, which involved the United States, Russia and several other countries, came after Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison in what U.S. authorities called a sham trial. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and later convicted of espionage, charges he and his family deny.
Here are five things you need to know about the deal.
The biggest swap since the Cold War
A total of 24 people and seven countries were involved in Thursday’s complex prisoner exchange.
Russia has accepted eight prisoners held abroad on various charges and released 16, many of whom had been wrongfully detained or given heavy sentences for minor crimes.
Freed in the deal are three U.S. citizens and one U.S. green card holder: Gershkovich, Whelan, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalists Ars Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Among the Russians released were Artem Durtsev and Anna Durtseva, who were held in Slovenia on espionage charges and had alleged ties to the Russian foreign intelligence service, and pleaded guilty on Wednesday.
Mikhail Mikushin, who was arrested in Norway on espionage charges and accused of spying for Russia in 2022, was released, as was Roman Seleznev, a Russian hacker and credit card fraudster who was serving a 27-year sentence in the United States after being detained in 2014.
Five Germans were also released.
In a statement, President Biden credited Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey for helping to make the agreement happen, saying, “This is a powerful example of why it’s important to have friends in this world we can trust and rely on. Our alliances keep the American people safe.”
Biden signs deal hours before withdrawing from 2024 election
Negotiations over the eventual prisoner swap have been underway for months, but officials said the final details of the agreement were only really coming together as Biden makes crucial decisions about his political future.
“One of the things you may not know is that on Sunday, when the president announced he was not going to seek reelection, literally an hour before he made that statement, he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart, urging them to make the final touches and get this deal done,” a senior administration official told reporters.
Biden announced on the afternoon of July 21 that he would not seek a second term as president, amid calls from many Democrats for him to step down. Biden quickly endorsed Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee, and Harris quickly solidified her support within the party.
Some White House officials said Thursday that Biden’s move to strike a prisoner deal on the same day he was announced was an example of his willingness to put the presidency above his own political ambitions.
“We are proud of Joe Biden every day, but especially today,” campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo wrote in a post on social platform X.
The US was working on a deal to free Navalny
One element of the negotiations that had not been previously reported was that the Biden administration was working toward a deal that would include the release of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in February.
“We were working with our partners on a deal that included Alexei Navalny, and unfortunately he has passed away,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
“In fact, the very day he passed away, I met with Evan’s parents and told them that the President was committed to seeing this through despite that tragic news and would be working around the clock to get to this point,” he continued. “And that work has continued over the last few months, culminating in this day and age.”
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in a Russian prison in February aged 47.
Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges and returned to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from the poisoning, where he remained in prison, but he has placed the blame on President Putin, who has denied trying to kill Navalny with a nerve agent.
Germany played an important role
Biden reiterated Thursday that the prisoner exchange underscores the importance of the alliance, but he praised Germany in particular.
“I especially owe a great deal of gratitude to the chancellor,” Biden said. “The thing they wanted me to do was to extract some big concessions from Germany, and they concluded initially that they couldn’t do that because of the people in question.”
Russia placed particular emphasis on the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany of murdering a Georgian in Berlin. Krasikov was sentenced to life in prison in 2021, but a German judge said he acted on the orders of Russian authorities.
Biden has discussed the contours of a potential agreement with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Biden administration officials cited Harris’ role in meeting in person with Scholz during the Munich Security Conference in February.
Biden’s victory
With Biden deciding not to run for a second term, it was hard not to view Thursday’s momentous event through the lens of his accomplishments and what he hopes to accomplish in his final six months in office.
Sullivan rejected the idea that Biden places special importance on passing the prisoner deal as part of his legacy, saying he’s “looking at it from a family perspective.”
“It was very important to him to get a deal done, but it had less to do with tenure and more to do with the power and responsibility that he had, and he wanted to exercise that to get this done as quickly as possible,” Sullivan said.
But Biden’s top national security adviser argued that releasing American prisoners was something only Biden, with his decades of experience, could accomplish.
“Today’s exchange is the kind of diplomatic feat that, frankly, only a leader like Joe Biden could accomplish,” Sullivan said.
But Republicans have continued to voice their criticism, with former President Trump calling it a “bad” deal and his running mate in 2024, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), arguing that the deal was only possible because Russia feared a Trump administration would return after November.
