A historic prisoner exchange

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: That multinational prisoner swap from last week.

It was Thursday when news started to break that three Americans in Russian captivity were coming home. Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and Radio Free Europe reporter Alsu Kurmasheva.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: When they landed in the U.S. President Biden and Vice President Harris were on hand to greet them.

Whelan later spoke with reporters after arriving in Texas.

PAUL WHELAN: Looking forward to seeing my family down here and just recuperating from five years, seven months and five days of just absolute nonsense by the Russian government.

EICHER: Absolute nonsense, but ending it did come at a cost. How high a cost? Joining us now to talk about it is WORLD Correspondent Jill Nelson.

Jill, good morning.

JILL NELSON: Good morning, Nick.

EICHER: Jill, this situation sounds like the prisoner swap in the film Bridge of Spies, based on the story of an American lawyer negotiating the release of U-2 spy pilot Gary Powers and an American student in exchange for a Soviet spy. But last week’s deal was considerably more complicated than that, because of the many parties involved. Can you be specific about how many countries and how many people were involved in this putting this exchange together?

NELSON: Yeah, this was a very complex deal, and in fact, it was the largest prisoner swap between the West and Russia since the Cold War. It involved seven different countries, including the United States, Poland, Germany; months of high level negotiations that involved our President, our Vice President, a number of government organizations, including the CIA. But essentially, in the end, you had 16 people released from Russia and Belarus sent to the West. And then you had half that number, which I think is worth noting, sent back to Russia from the U.S. So it was a very complex deal that involved a lot of moving parts.

MAST: Remind us the background for Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich’s arrests and detainments.

NELSON: Evan Gershkovich was the Wall Street Journal reporter. He was detained over a year ago while he was actually on a reporting trip in Russia. He was actually there covering the Wagner Group, which, as you may remember, is the Russian mercenary group involved in the war in Ukraine, as well as several African countries accused of war crimes all over the world. So he was wrongfully convicted on false charges of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. And then Paul Whelan was a former U.S. Marine. He has, he is a U.S. citizen, also citizenship in several other countries. He was detained six years ago. He was in Russia for a wedding and also sentenced to 16 years in prison.

EICHER: When I heard who the Russians were releasing, I immediately wondered who we had to give up to make this happen. Go back to 2022, we ended up releasing—what was his nickname?—the merchant of death, the arms dealer Viktor Bout in order to get the basketball player Brittany Griner out of jail. And the administration tried to get Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich that time, but Vladimir Putin said no-go. I guess it’s just a simple matter of economics that the U.S. is clearly willing to pay a high price. Putin knows that, and so he’ll hold out for the right deal. Is that what’s different this time?

NELSON: Well, I think there's a couple things at play here. I think Putin was really pushing for a deal that he could spin as a win for the Motherland, a propaganda victory. I mean, remember, this war in Ukraine has really been going on since 2014. The second invasion was 2022, and so you have a country that is still involved in what seems like an endless war. So I think this is a way to say, “Hey, look, the Kremlin always goes to bat for its people” and maybe to get the Russian population's eyes off of what's happening in Ukraine and onto some sort of tangible victory. But I do think that there were a number of people that Putin really wanted to be free. All of these people were jailed for things like spying, cyber crimes, but most notably, there was one person who was a Russian assassin who was convicted of a daylight murder in a Berlin Park in broad daylight. I'm thinking of Vadim Krasikov, and I think that's who he really has been wanting for quite some time. And that's where we needed the help from our allies and a German government willing to release Krasikov as part of this deal. So, I think that's probably what was different this time around, is we were able to get kind of that key person that Putin wanted as part of this deal.

MAST: One of the sixteen people the Kremlin released was Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. He gave a news conference in Germany after his release, and he talked a bit about the late Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in detention earlier this year. Let’s listen to a little bit of that:

KARA-MURZA: I cannot help but think yesterday and today about Alexei Navalny. And to think that if these processes had worked a little faster,  maybe Alexei could have been here with us.

Jill, with Navalny dead and dissidents like Kara-Murza out of the country, what’s left of the opposition in Russia?

NELSON: Well, it's really not the best situation right now for the Russian opposition movement inside Russia. I mean, you have a Russian president who's been eroding democratic freedoms for decades now. He's been in power the Russian president, Vladimir Putin since 2000 and in mid-March, secured his fifth term in office. And he's really faced no serious challengers in the elections, because most of his legitimate opponents are either they've either been poisoned, or they're scattered in exile, or they're dead, like Alexei Navalny. So you have what amounts to a growing number of Russian dissidents abroad. Lithuania has become a primary hub. Germany has become a hub. You also have a number of political dissidents in the United States. I'm thinking of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is part of the renewed democracy initiative. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian political prisoner and oil tycoon who now lives in London. So the question is, can this group put aside their differences and unite together and be a force for change within Russia? And what I'm hearing from some of these connections is that really one of the best things that could happen to support this group is a Ukrainian victory in this war that would really upend some of the Russian narrative and some of the support that Russia has from his people.

EICHER: Haven’t we simply incentivized the unjust taking of Americans with this deal? Does anything else stand out to you about this story?

NELSON: I think that is a factor, and I think there is concern, particularly among even some human rights activists, that deals like this will incentivize Putin or really other evil actors around the world to detain more people, Westerners, in particular, on these trumped-up charges, which is really what they amount to. Right? Arresting journalists, arresting political dissidents. This really has become a game, I think, for Putin and perhaps could become a game for others around the world. So, I know the Biden administration claims they've looked into this. They've looked into past deals. They have concluded it does not increase the arrests of Westerners or has not in the past, but this is a high profile case. I do wonder whether or not this is sending a really strong message to some of our enemies out there that these sorts of deals are deals we're willing to make.

MAST: Jill Nelson covers foreign conflicts as a correspondent for WORLD. Thanks for this report!

NELSON: Happy to be here.

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