BREAKING: US and Russia complete biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history

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From the Associated Press: The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.

The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations 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.

The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries. But the release of Americans has come at a price: Russia has secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the U.S. considers bogus.

In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.

Whelan, a US Marine veteran, had been held in a Russian prison for 16 years. He was arrested in December 2018, and accused of being a spy.

Gershkovich, a WSJ reporter, was arrested in March 2023, and was accused of working for the CIA.

BBC reported:

Twenty-six people from prisons in seven different countries were exchanged in Ankara, Turkey’s presidency says. The prisoners are from the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia, and Belarus, it says in a statement. Ten people, including two minors, were relocated to Russia, 13 prisoners to Germany, and three to the US, the statement adds.

According to Fox News, the swap was delayed because Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted one Russian who was being held in Germany to be part of the deal.  The Biden administration had to pull some strings with Germany to get them to release the man, in order to get the U.S. citizens back.

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