By Anton Troianovski and Mark Mazzetti
A prisoner swap Thursday involving seven countries freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans held in Russia, along with jailed Russian opposition figures, the White House said, in a deal whose size and complexity has little precedent in the post-Soviet era.
The deal — which came together after an elaborate web of negotiations behind the scenes — was a diplomatic victory for President Joe Biden, who has long pledged to bring home imprisoned Americans and to support Russia’s embattled pro-democracy movement.
Biden said at a news conference that the prisoners had left Russia and were on their way home.
“Their brutal ordeal is over, and they’re free,” he said, surrounded by family members of the released prisoners.
For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow freed prominent dissidents as part of a swap; 16 people in total were released from Russian custody. In exchange, eight people were freed by the West. The exchange took place at the international airport in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, and involved seven different planes ferrying 24 prisoners from the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia, a Turkish intelligence official said.
The deal was also a triumph of a different sort for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who can use the deal to highlight his loyalty to Russian agents who get arrested abroad. Germany released Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of murdering a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin in 2019 on orders of the Russian government.
Here’s what else to know:
— The deal freed Gershkovich, 32, who had spent 16 months in a Russian prison; Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, a Russian American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was also arrested last year; and Paul Whelan, 54, a former U.S. Marine arrested in 2018. The three American citizens were expected to land Thursday evening at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris planned to greet them.
— Prominent Russian political prisoners were also released. They included Ilya Yashin, 41, perhaps the most popular opposition politician who was still behind bars; Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, a veteran activist who also writes for The Washington Post; and Oleg Orlov, 71, co-chair of Memorial, a Russian human rights group.
— Several of those freed by Russia were German nationals, including German Moyzhes, a lawyer who was helping Russians obtain residence permits in Germany and other European Union countries. The United States released a convicted hacker, Vladislav Klyushin, and two others. Slovenia, Norway and Poland released four people accused of being Russian spies.
— In 2022, the United States freed Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, in exchange for Russia’s release of Brittney Griner, the basketball star arrested that year on drug charges.
— Some critics of deals like the one that freed Griner say they encourage further arrests of Americans by the Kremlin. But the newest deal was far broader than any trade that Biden or his recent predecessors had made with Putin.
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