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UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal‘s Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans held by Russia landed on U.S. soil late on Thursday, greeted by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at Joint Base Andrews.
After hugging Harris and then Biden, Gershkovich gave a big bear hug to his mother, Ella Milman, picking her up off her feet.
Also arriving was Alsu Kurmasheva and Paul Whelan, two other Americans who were part of a complex prisoner swap with Russia. Biden gave Whelan his American flag lapel pin.
Asked by reporters what his message was for Vladimir Putin, Biden said, “Stop.”
“To me, this is about the essence of who we are as a country,” Biden said. “It really is about personal relationships. It’s about family. It’s about having access to people you love and you endure.”
Biden also was asked how it felt for him to work on the prisoner exchange deal even as he was deciding not to seek a second term.
“I’d still get it done even if I was seeking a second term,” Biden said. “You’re stuck with me as a president for a while, kid. There’s no way out. You got me for at least 190 days. So it didn’t have anything to do with that.”
PREVIOUSLY: President Joe Biden confirmed that Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan have been freed along with Alsu Kurmasheva, and columnist and dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy,” Biden said in a statement. “All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia—including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country. Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”
The president plans to make a statement at noon ET/9 a.m. PT.
“WSJ REPORTER EVAN GERSHKOVICH IS FREE,” the Journal posted on their homepage at 11:39 a.m. ET, having held off on news blasts until the swap was complete. The WSJ reported that Gershkovich and other Americans left Russian aircraft at about 11:20 a.m. ET at an airport in Ankara, Turkey.
Gershkovich had been held for more than a year after Russia charged him with espionage, something that the publication and U.S. officials said was bogus. He was sentenced last month to 16 years in a penal colony.
A total of two dozen prisoners were involved. Among the highest profile Russians in the exchange was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hit man in prison in Germany, per the Journal.
PREVIOUSLY: Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. marine Paul Whelan, who were both serving long sentences in Russian penal colonies on contested espionage charges, will be freed as part of large prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. alongside Germany.
Per a report by the well-informed Politika.Kozlov political newsletter, re-printed up by the Moscow Times late Wednesday, between 20 to 30 political prisoners and journalists in captivity in Russia were on the verge of being freed in what would be the biggest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War.
Bloomberg confirmed on Thursday that Gershkovich and Paul Whelan were among the prisoners and were now on their way back to the U.S., according to an undisclosed source. Neither the WSJ nor the U.S. State Department have confirmed the reports.
Gershkovich was arrested in Russia in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the eastern Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Russia accused him of working with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), charges which Gershkovich and the WSJ vehemently denied.
He was sentenced in July to 16 years in a high-security penal colony, becoming the first U.S. journalist to be convicted for espionage since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
President Joe Biden issued a statement in the wake of the sentence declaring Gershkovich’s innocence and saying he had been targeted by “the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”
At the time of Gershkovich’s sentencing, there were suggestions in some well-informed media and diplomatic quarters that the speed of his trial indicated a prisoner swap deal was already on the cards.
Whelan was arrested in Russia in December, 2018 and was sentenced in 2020 to a 16-year prison sentence on spying charges.
Other names on Politika.Kozlov’s speculative list of potential releasees include Russian-UK political activist and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
The last prisoner exchange between Russia and the U.S. was in December 2022 when U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was released in turn for the freedom of arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a minimum 25-year sentence in the U.S. at the time.
At the time of Griner’s release, Biden expressed regret that Whelan had not been included in the same exchange. Griner also vowed to keep campaigning for her U.S. compatriots still held in Russian jails.
