Moscow has released a total of 16 people to the West, a statement from President Biden says
Three American citizens and one US resident have been released by Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, President Joe Biden has said in a statement.
Several media outlets have reported on a swap, which began on Thursday afternoon in the Turkish capital, Ankara, but both Moscow and Washington had initially refrained from providing official comment.
”Today, three American citizens and one American green-card holder who were unjustly imprisoned in Russia are finally coming home: Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza,” Biden’s statement said.
The statement described the exchange arrangement as “a feat of diplomacy” and thanked Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Türkiye for helping the US achieve this outcome.
According to the White House, the exchange secured the release of 16 people from Russia, including five German nationals and seven Russian citizens described as “political prisoners in their own country.” Biden made no mention of ten Russian nationals released by the US and its allies in exchange.
Gershkovich is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who was arrested in March last year after being caught soliciting classified information about Uralvagonzavod, a major Russian tank and armored vehicle manufacturer in Ekaterinburg. He was convicted of espionage in early July and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security colony.
Whelan is a former US Marine – as well as a citizen of the UK, Ireland and Canada – who was arrested for espionage in 2018 and sentenced in 2020. He was left out of the 2022 deal to exchange basketball player Brittney Griner for Russian businessman Viktor Bout.
Kurmasheva is an employee of the US state-funded outlet RFE/RL, who worked for its Tatar-Bashkir language service. She was arrested in Kazan in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, and later with spreading false information about the Russian military.
Kara-Murza is a dual citizen of Russia and the UK, but also an American green-card holder. He was sentenced in 2023 to 25 years in a maximum-security colony for treason, among other charges. A protege of the late opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and a close associate of exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he served as an executive of the Washington-based Free Russia Foundation.
