Paul Whelan recalls low ebb of Russian imprisonment

Paul Whelan, a former Marine who was detained by Russia from 2018 to this August under a false suspicion of spying, said his lowest moment in prison came when WNBA star Brittney Griner was released.

At that point, Whelan had been imprisoned for four years, subjected to sleep deprivation, and lived in labor camps and Russia’s infamous Lefortovo prison — the same prison where the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich was held . The United States had already exchanged two high-profile Russians (Konstantin Yaroshenko and Viktor Bout) for Trevor Reed, another former Marine, and Griner.

In his first interview since being released, Whelan told CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan that he felt like the U.S. government had abandoned him.

“So what else do you have to trade?” Whelan asked a Department of Homeland Security officer over a phone call after hearing of Griner’s exchange.

“Nothing,” the officer responded, according to Whelan.

“You gave up your negotiation platform? There's nothing else? How do you now get me back?” he said, adding, “You realize what you've done, that you have abandoned me here. You have no one to trade. They don't want anyone else.”

Whelan was eventually traded as part of an expansive multi-country deal for Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was being held by the German chancellor for killing someone in Berlin. He was brought home on Aug.1 with Gershkovich and two other journalists, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Alsu Kurmasheva.

His five years and nine months in Russia stick with him though, and he announced plans to write a book about the experience.

“What the Russians did in Lefortovo prison, it's the FSB prison in Moscow, they kept a light on 24 hours in my cell, so sleeping was very difficult,” Whelan told Brennan. “At the labor camp for four years, they would come every two hours to my bed at night and they would wake me up. They would shine a light in my face and take a picture every night, every two hours I was woken up. Getting off that sleep pattern has been very, very difficult."

Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow while attending the wedding of a fellow former Marine. He maintains his innocence, arguing that Russians set him up.

"I was certainly targeted. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't committed espionage. I was accused of being a brigadier general with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. I certainly was never a general and I never worked for the DIA and I was never a secret agent. So the case they came up with was materially false,” he said.

While in prison, Whelan kept up to date with the outside world through mail, illegal cell phones and visits from American, Canadian, Irish and English ambassadors.

The prison guards “looked the other way,” Whelan said, referring to the phones. “A Russian prison guard gets $300, $400 a month. You give them a carton of cigarettes and you can do everything you want.”

That’s how he first learned that Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2022. Soon he realized that some of the labor camp prisoners were being forced to fight in the Russian military.

“The Russian media is just propaganda, and they didn't report much on the war because they were losing. And that was interesting for us. Information came in very, very slowly, but when the Russian government started taking prisoners from our camps to go to the war, then we knew they were really in trouble,” he said.

According to Whelan, 450 prisoners from his camp were taken, all of whom he knew.

“They were used as cannon fodder. They would be sent out in front of patrols to try to draw out enemy fire. That's what Russia is doing with these people. And they're all young. Putin has thrown away a generation of his youth in Ukraine for nothing.”

Whelan credits Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as Griner, for helping to get him out.

“Brittney was a great help,” he said. “After she came home, probably within days of her getting home, she was talking to people about how they could support me. And she had people making monetary donations, sending cards, sending letters, offering all sorts of support.”

His first interaction back on U.S. soil was with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who greeted him on the tarmac.

“I didn’t realize the President and Vice President were going to be there. I had been in solitary confinement for the five days prior to leaving. I had on clothes that I had worn in 2018 when I had been arrested. They hadn't been washed, they were too big for me. I was very careful coming down the stairs from the plane,” Whelan said.

He added: “We embraced, we hugged, we chatted. At one point, the president took the flag lapel off him and put it on my shirt. That made it real, because we were with real people.”