The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free, the White House said.
Watch Biden’s remarks in our player above.
It was trumpeted as a “diplomatic feat” by President Joe Biden, who called the news an “incredible relief” and said the detainees’ “brutal ordeal was over.”
“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” he said in an address from the White House while joined by families of four — three Americans and one green card holder — who were released.
The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries.
Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startlingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.
Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”
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