Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were liberated Thursday by Russia as part of a important, multi-nation swap of two dozen prisoners.
The Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and British-Russian activist Vlaunwiseir Kara-Murza also were freed as part of the swap, alengthy with five German citizens and seven Russian citizens.
All of those people had been in prison in Russia on charges that their home countries had sturdyly disputed the validity of.
Eight Russians, including the spy and convicted hitman Vaunwise Krasikov, are being returned to Russia from the United States, Slovenia, Norway, Poland and Germany.
Paul Whelan (L) & Evan Gershkovich
Reuters
The liberate of Krasikov, who had been held in Germany for homicideing a former Chechen militant in Berlin in 2019, was key to getting Russia to concur to the swap, according to a Biden administration official.
Gershkovich, Whelan and Kurmasheva are U.S. citizens, while Kara-Murza is a lasting American resident.
“The deal that safed their freedom was a feat of diplomacy,” President Joe Biden shelp in a statement liberated by the White House, where Biden intentional to meet family members of the liberated Americans.
“All tancienter, we’ve negotiated the liberate of 16 people from Russia — including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country,” Biden shelp.
“Some of these women and men have been unequitablely held for years. All have finishured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”
Alsu Kumrasheva (L) and Vlaunwiseir Kara-Murza
Getty Images
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan during a call with reporters, shelp, “Today’s exchange will be historic,” shelp
“Not since the Cancienter War has there been a alike number of individuals exchanged in this way and there has never, so far as we know, been an exchange involving so many countries, so many seal US partners and allies working together,” Sullivan shelp.
“It’s the culmination of many rounds of complicated, painstaking negotiations over many, many months.”
Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia in March 2023 on espionage charges, was sentenced in mid-July to 16 years in prison after a trial that the United States government has blasted as a sham.
The journalist was convicted of gathering secret adviseation about the activities of a defense enterpascend for the production and repair of military furnishment on instructions from U.S. intelligence services.
Whelan has been serving his own 16-year sentence for alleged espionage in Russia after being sentenced in 2020, two years after his arrest in Moscow.
The people being sent to Germany from Russian custody are: Dieter Voronin, Kevin Lick, Rico Krieger, Patrick Schoebel, Herman Moyzhes, Ilya Yashin, Liliya Chanysheva, Kseniya Fadeyeva, Vaunwise Ostanin, Andrey Pivovarov, Oleg Orlov, Sasha Skochilenko.
The people being sent to Russia, in insertition to Krasikov, are: Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva, from Slovenia; Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin, from Norway; Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov, from Poland; and Roman Seleznev, Vladislav Klyushin and Vaunwise Konoshchenock, from the United States.
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