The White House on Thursday trumpeted what it called a “joyous day” as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan were released as part of a major prisoner swap with Russia.
The exchange of prisoners involved several countries in addition to the U.S. and Russia and comes after Gershkovich had been sentenced to 16 years in prison in what American officials called a sham trial. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and later convicted on spying charges that he and his family have denied.
Here are five things to know about the deal.
Biggest swap since the Cold War
In total, two dozen people and seven countries were involved in Thursday’s complex prisoner exchange.
Russia received eight prisoners who were being held abroad on various charges and released 16, many of whom were being wrongfully held or were severely sentenced for minor offenses.
Three United States citizens and one U.S. green card holder were released in the deal: Gershkovich, Whelan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Among the Russians released were Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who were being held in Slovenia on espionage charges and were linked to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. The pair pleaded guilty Wednesday.
Mikhail Mikushin, who was arrested in 2022 in Norway on espionage charges and accused of spying for Russia, was released, as was Roman Seleznev, a Russian hacker and credit card fraudster who was sentenced to 27 years in prison in the U.S. after his detention in 2014.
Five Germans were freed as well.
In a statement, President Biden credited Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey with helping secure the deal and called it “a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world whom you can trust and depend upon. Our alliances make Americans safer.”
Biden finalized deal hours before dropping out of 2024 race
Negotiations over the eventual prisoner swap had taken place over the course of many months, but officials said the final details of the agreement truly came together as Biden weighed a momentous decision about his own political future.
“One of the things that you all may not know is that the Sunday that the president announced he was no longer going to pursue reelection … literally an hour before he released that statement, he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart, urging them to make the final arrangements and to get this deal over the finish line,” a senior administration official told reporters.
Biden announced on the afternoon of July 21 that he would not seek a second term in office in the face of calls from many Democrats for him to step aside. He promptly endorsed Vice President Harris to be the Democratic nominee instead, and she has quickly consolidated support within the party.
Some White House officials on Thursday pointed to Biden’s work on the prisoner deal on the day of that announcement as an example of Biden’s willingness to put the presidency ahead of his own political ambitions.
“Proud of Joe Biden everyday, but especially today,” campaign spokesperson TJ Ducklo posted on social platform X.
US had worked on a deal to free Navalny
One previously unreported element of the negotiations is that the Biden administration had been working on a deal that would have included the release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the time of his death in February.
“We had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexei Navalny, and unfortunately he died,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
“In fact, on the very day that he died, I saw Evan’s parents and I told them that the president was determined to get this done even in light of that tragic news, and that we were gonna work day and night to get to this day,” he continued. “And so that work continued over the past few months and culminated in today.”
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in a Russian prison. He was 47.
Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Russia after recovering from a poisoning that he blamed on Putin, who has denied trying to kill Navalny with a nerve agent.
Germany played a crucial role
Biden spoke repeatedly Thursday about how the prisoner exchange underscored the importance of alliances, but there was special praise reserved for Germany in particular.
“I particularly owe a great sense of gratitude to the chancellor,” Biden said. “The demands they were making of me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question.”
The Russians were particularly interested in securing the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany for killing a Georgian citizen in Berlin. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2021, when German judges said Krasikov had acted on the orders of Russian authorities.
Biden spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the contours of a potential deal as it developed, and Biden administration officials cited Harris’s role in meeting face-to-face with Scholz during the Munich Security Conference in February.
A win for Biden
With Biden opting not to seek a second term, it was difficult not to view Thursday’s momentous events through the lens of Biden’s legacy and what he wants to accomplish in his final six months in office.
Sullivan downplayed the idea that Biden felt a particular sense of importance in getting the prisoner deal done as part of his legacy, saying he was “thinking about it from the families’ perspective.”
“For him, it was really important to do the deal, but less tied to his time in office and more tied to the power and responsibility he had and wanted to exercise to get this done as fast as he possibly could,” Sullivan said.
But Biden’s top national security aide also touted the release of the American prisoners as something only Biden, with his decades of experience, could have accomplished.
“Today’s exchange is a feat of diplomacy that honestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden,” Sullivan said.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from chiming in with criticism, however. Former President Trump suggested it was a “bad” deal, while his running mate in the 2024 election, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), argued the agreement was only possible because Russia feared the return of a Trump administration after November.