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The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.

The trade unfolded despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Negotiators in backchannel talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny but after his death in February ultimately stitched together a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and secured freedom for a cluster of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.

President Joe Biden trumpeted the exchange, by far the largest in a series of swaps with Russia, as a diplomatic feat while welcoming families of the returning Americans to the White House. But the deal, like others before it, reflected an innate imbalance: The U.S. and allies gave up Russians charged or convicted of serious crimes in exchange for Russia releasing journalists, dissidents and others imprisoned by the country's highly politicized legal system on charges seen by the West as trumped-up.

“Deals like this one come with tough calls,” Biden said, but added: “There’s nothing that matters more to me than protecting Americans at home and abroad.”

The Journal confirmed that Gershkovich had been freed.

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Swapped prisoners

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.

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President Joe Biden says detained Americans are coming home and ‘their brutal ordeal is over’

Addressing the nation from the White House State Room, Biden said it was a “feat of diplomacy” that brought home Whelan, Gershkovich, Kurmasheva and Kara-Murza. He said multiple countries worked together to get it done.

As Biden made his statement at the White House, he was joined by relatives of the freed Americans.

The U.S. president said he and the families had spoken to their relatives by phone from the Oval Office minutes before his address. Biden called the release an “incredible relief” for the families and a feat of diplomacy.

Biden said the work to bring home those wrongfully detained began during his transition into the presidency. And he said his administration has brought home 70 Americans, “many since before I took office.”

Vice President Kamala Harris reacts

Vice President Kamala Harris says in a statement the U.S. is celebrating the release of those “unjustly held in Russia.”

Harris, the likely Democratic nominee for president, wrote: “It gives me great comfort to know that their horrible ordeal is over.” She said the Biden administration will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained has been brought home.

Turkey’s intelligence chief facilitated talks between the US and Russia, per Turkish official

A Turkish security official said Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, personally facilitated talks between his U.S. and Russian counterparts for the prisoner swap.

The talks took place in Istanbul and Ankara, the official said.

According to the official, Washington and Moscow reached out to Turkey requesting its assistance. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then instructed Kalin to “do whatever is necessary” to make the deal happen, according to the official, who provided the information on customary condition of anonymity.

The Wall Street Journal celebrates Gershkovich’s release

Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker says Gershkovich has walked free from a Russian plane and will soon board a flight home to the U.S.

“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same,” Tucker wrote in a note to the staff obtained by the AP. “This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for The Wall Street Journal.”

Wall Street Journal reporters broke into applause after his release was announced in the New York newsroom. Gershkovich’s photo was projected onto a screen along with #IStandWithEvan, the hashtag supporters around the world used to call for his freedom.

Russia extended Gershkovich’s detention several times

In February, a Moscow court ruled to keep him in custody pending his trial.

In March, the court ordered him to remain in jail on espionage charges until at least late June. The 32-year-old had spent nearly a year behind bars by then.

In April, the court rejected an appeal that sought to end his pretrial detention.

His arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg rattled journalists in Russia, where authorities have not detailed what, if any, evidence they have to support the espionage charges.

Gershkovich appeared in Russian court more than a dozen times

Since his detention, Gershkovich has appeared more than a dozen times in Russian courtrooms — first in Moscow, where he was held at the notorious Lefortovo Prison, and then at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

His pretrial appearances became almost formulaic, as he was led in handcuffs over and over from a prison van to a glass defendant’s cage. They offered his family and friends both a painful reminder of his detention but also a chance to lay eyes on him.

“It’s always a mixed feeling. I’m happy to see him and that he’s doing well, but it’s a reminder that he is not with us. We want him at home,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told The Associated Press in an interview in March.

Although Gershkovich was often seen smiling in the brief appearances, friends and family said he found it hard to face a wall of cameras pointed at him as if he were an animal in a zoo.

As his trial started behind closed doors on June 26, Gershkovich stood in the defendants cage with a shaved head as the media were allowed briefly into the court.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

Released by Russia and Belarus

EVAN GERSHKOVICH, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023. Without providing evidence, authorities accused him of “gathering secret information” at the CIA’s behest about a military equipment factory — an allegation that Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently denied. Jailed since then, a court convicted Gershkovich, 32, of espionage in July after a closed trial and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

PAUL WHELAN, a corporate security executive from Michigan, was arrested in 2018 in Moscow, where he was attending a friend’s wedding. He was accused of espionage, convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, 54, has rejected the charges as fabricated.

ALSU KURMASHEVA, a dual U.S.-Russian national, was arrested in 2023 in her hometown of Kazan, where she was visiting her ailing mother. The Prague-based editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service was accused of not self-reporting as a “foreign agent” and was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military — charges rejected by her family and employer. Kurmasheva, 47, was sentenced to 6½ years in prison.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA, a dual Russian-U.K. citizen and prominent opposition politician, was arrested in 2022 after criticizing the war in Ukraine that had begun weeks earlier. He was convicted in 2023 of treason and other charges, and sentenced to 25 years in prison in a case he called politically motivated. A columnist for The Washington Post, Kara-Murza, 42, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize this year. He fell ill in 2015 and 2017 from near-fatal poisonings he blamed on the Kremlin. His wife said his health deteriorated in prison as a result of the poisonings.

ILYA YASHIN is a prominent Kremlin critic who was serving an 8 1/2-year sentence for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Yashin, a former member of a Moscow municipal council, was one of the few well-known opposition activists to stay in Russia since the war.

ANDREI PIVOVAROV, 42, headed the opposition group Open Russia, outlawed in 2021. He was pulled off a flight and arrested that same year. In 2022, he was convicted of carrying out activities of an “undesirable” organization and sentenced to four years in prison.

OLEG ORLOV, a veteran human rights campaigner, was convicted of discrediting the Russian military and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in February for his protests of the war in Ukraine. Orlov, 71, is co-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial.

SASHA SKOCHILENKO, 33, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in November 2023 for replacing several price tags in a supermarket with anti-war slogans.

KSENIA FADEYEVA, LILIA CHANYSHEVA and VADIM OSTANIN are former coordinators of regional offices of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny. They were arrested after Navalny’s political network was outlawed in 2021 and later convicted of extremism. Fadeyeva, 32, and Ostanin, 47, each were sentenced to 9 years in prison, and Chanysheva, 42, got a 9 1/2-year term.

KEVIN LIK, 19, a dual Russian-German national, was arrested in southern Russia in 2023 and accused of taking photos of a military unit and sending them to a “representative of a foreign state.” Court officials said he opposed to the war in Ukraine. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to four years in prison, with rights advocates saying Lik, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, was the youngest person convicted of that crime.

RICO KRIEGER, a German medical worker, was convicted in Belarus of terrorism charges in June, and sentenced to death. He was pardoned Tuesday by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

DEMURI VORONIN, a dual Russian-German national, is a political scientist who ran a consultancy that reportedly collaborated with journalists. He was arrested in 2021, convicted of treason in 2023 and sentenced to 13 years and three months in prison. He was implicated in the treason trial of Ivan Safronov, who allegedly passed him information on Russian military activities, which Voronin allegedly then gave to German intelligence.

PATRICK SCHOEBEL, a German national, was arrested in February 2024 at Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg when gummies containing a psychoactive component of cannabis were allegedly found in his possession. He has been detained since then, facing drug-smuggling charges.

GERMAN MOYZHES, a dual Russian-German national, is a migration lawyer who helped Russians apply for European Union residence permits. He was arrested in May in St. Petersburg and reportedly accused of treason, but little else is known about his case.

Released by the West

VADIM KRASIKOV was convicted in 2021 of shooting to death Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, in a Berlin park. The German judges concluded it was an assassination ordered by the Russian security services. Krasikov, 58, was sentenced to life imprisonment. President Vladimir Putin this year hinted at a possible swap for Krasikov.

PAVEL RUBTSOV, also known as Pablo Gonzalez, a journalist working for Spanish media, was arrested on espionage charges in eastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border, in the first days after Russia’s full-scale-invasion in 2022. Poland’s Internal Security Agency identified him as a Russian intelligence agent, although some rights groups criticized Warsaw for holding him for more than two years without charge, and Reporters Without Borders called for his release.

ROMAN SELEZNEV, the son of a Russian lawmaker, was convicted in the U.S. in 2017 of hacking into more than 500 businesses and stealing millions of credit card numbers, which he then sold on websites. Seleznev, a Russian citizen, was sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $170 million in restitution to his victims.

VLADISLAV KLYUSHIN, a wealthy businessman with ties to the Kremlin, was convicted in Boston in 2023 of charges including wire fraud and securities fraud in a nearly $100 million scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen via hacking U.S. computer networks. Klyushin, 43, who was said to have personally pocketed $33 million in the scheme, was sentenced to nine years in prison. He was arrested in Switzerland and extradited to the U.S. in 2021.

VADIM KONOSHCHENOK, a suspected officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, was extradited to the United States from Estonia last year to face charges he smuggled ammunition and dual-use technology to help Moscow’s war in Ukraine. U.S. prosecutors say he was detained in 2022 while trying to return to Russia from Estonia with about three dozen types of semiconductors and electronic components.

ARTEM DULTSEV and ANNA DULTSEVA, a Russian couple arrested on espionage charges in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2022, pleaded guilty Wednesday and were sentenced to 19 months in prison, and released on time served. Posing as Argentine citizens, they reportedly had used Slovenia as a base since 2017 to travel to neighboring countries and relay Moscow’s orders to other Russian sleeper agents. They have two children.

MIKHAIL MIKUSHIN was arrested in Norway in 2022 on espionage charges. Norway’s domestic security agency PST said Mikushin entered the country saying he was a Brazilian citizen. He was in Norway under a false identity while working for a Russia’s intelligence service, Norwegian investigators said.

(Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)

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