U.S., Russia complete 24-person prisoner swap

This photo combination shows Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, left, corporate security executive Paul Whelan, top right, and Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin. (AP Photo)

The U.S. and Russia completed a 24-person prisoner swap on Thursday, the largest in post-Soviet history, with Moscow releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.

It’s the latest exchange between Washington and Moscow in the past two years, following a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout.

Russia meanwhile secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says the wide-ranging prisoner exchange between Russia and the West “in some cases saved the health and life” of the people who were freed.

A central part of the swap was the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for what judges concluded was a Russian state-ordered killing in Berlin in 2019. Scholz told reporters that the “difficult decision” was made by his coalition government “after careful consideration.” He said that “no one made this decision lightly to deport a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years in detention.”

Krasikov was convicted for the 2019 killing of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen who had fought Russian troops in Chechnya and later claimed asylum in Germany.

Khangoshvili was gunned down from behind near Kleiner Tiergarten, a central Berlin park, with a silencer-fitted handgun. Witnesses saw the gunman throw a bike, a gun and a dark wig into the Spree River nearby. Police arrested him before he could escape on an electric scooter.

At his sentencing to life in prison in 2021, German judges said Krasikov had acted on the orders of Russian authorities, who gave him a false identity, passport and the resources to carry out the killing.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre confirmed the prisoner exchange includes Mikhail Mikushin, a suspected senior officer of Russian military intelligence GRU who was arrested in the Arctic city of Tromso by the Nordic country’s domestic security agency in October 2022.

Mikushin, who had entered Norway in 2021 as an academic researcher under a false Brazilian name and identity, was suspected by Norwegian authorities of being a spy for the Russian intelligence services and was later charged with espionage.

The U.S. believes the benefit of securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans outweighed the risk of incentivizing American adversaries from taking additional prisoners as leverage, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Thursday.

Sullivan acknowledged that “It is difficult to send back a convicted criminal to secure the release of an innocent American,” saying it’s a question U.S. policymakers “grapple with every time” a prisoner swap deal is discussed.

Sullivan says the U.S. conducted an assessment and determined that the “benefit outweighs the risk.”

Sullivan says Roger Carsten, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, conducted an analysis that suggests Americans are at no greater risk for being detained when the U.S. makes deals to secure their release.

Paul Whelan’s family issued the statement Thursday after confirming the former Marine was among those coming home.

The family used the opportunity to thank President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. But they also expressed gratitude to Washington insiders, ordinary letter writers and journalists who all helped keep up pressure for Whelan’s release.

In the statement, the family notes that Whelan lost his home and his job while wrongfully held by Russia.

“We are unsure how someone overcomes these losses and rejoins society after being a hostage,” his family wrote.

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