Exchange with Russia releases US citizens Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, among others.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan are among more than a dozen prisoners released by Russia in exchange for Russian prisoners from the United States and other European countries in one of the biggest prisoner swaps since the Cold War, said the officials on Thursday.

Russia

Altogether, 16 political prisoners, journalists, and others incarcerated alongside five Germans are to be freed in exchange for eight Russians incarcerated in the United States, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, and Poland. Of these, Russian Mafiaman Vadim Krasikov, an ex-Russian state hitman detained in Germany, while three other Russians are in the custody of the U.S.

President Biden told the story and said it was ‘a feat of diplomacy’ and thanked those who collaborated with the United States to reach the swap deal. “This is a good statement of why it pays to have friends in this world whom you can always lean on,” he added.

Sullivan also commented that not since the Cold War were there so many people exchanged in this manner; he also noted that Biden would proceed to try to build on this success to free other Americans held in Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, and other locations, including Marc Fogel, a U. S. citizen who contracted a deadly disease.

Among those who have returned to the U.S. from Russia, several are Gershkovich, Whelan, Russian-American Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for Radio Free Europe funded by the United States, and the Russian dissident Kar-Murza currently holding a green card.

Blinken of the State Department had to thank the Turkish government for hosting a place for secure ^{} return of such people to the US and Germany.

That was where the Turkish government claimed in a statement it played a critical role and “performed the greatest prisoner exchange operation of today in Ankara,” including not only Whelan and Gershkovich but also a German mercenary, Rico Krieger imprisoned in Belarus, Russian dissident Ilya Yashin, and Vadim Krasikov, whom the Turkish ministry in thought is a colonel in the FSB – Russian internal security service.

The operation was carried out by MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency, the statement added.

Gershkovich was arrested in Moscow in March 2023 and became the first U.S. journalist since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. Last month, a Russian court convicted him of treason and espionage for spying for the CIA at a Russian arms firm and gave him 16 years in prison. Gershkovich, his employer, and the U.S. government all denied the accusations, and the United States itself considered Gershkovich to be wrongfully imprisoned.

In her statement, Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said, “Let us partake together and shout with one voice, Welcome home Evan. ”

Whelan, a former Marine and a U.S., British, Irish and Canadian citizen, was detained during a business trip in Moscow in December 2018 on espionage charges that he has repeatedly dismissed. An August 2020 Moscow court convicted Whelan and sentenced him to 16 years in prison on June 15th, 2020.

In a statement on Thursday, his family said: Paul was hostage for 2,043 days He was an American in danger, in the hands of the Russian Federation as part of a failed experiment in using hostages to get concessions … While Paul was a wrongfully imprisoned person in Russia, he lost his home, he lost his job, We do not know how the man recovers from these losses and reintegrate back into society We are thankful for all the efforts directed in helping Paul while he was away

The British Foreign Secretary David Lammy also expressed his joy regarding the release of Whelan, Kara-Murza, accompanied by British citizens. “Mr Kara-Murza is a dedicated opponent of Putin’s regime,” Lammy said in a statement. “He should never have been in prison in the first place: And they imprisoned him in life-threatening conditions because he dared to speak the truth about the war in Ukraine. “