Freed Americans Back on US Soil After Landmark Prisoner Swap

3 Americans Released as Part of Multination Prisoner Swap

WASHINGTON—Three Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan, and one American permanent resident are being released as part of a historic prisoner swap between Russia, the United States, and several other nations.

The United States and others negotiated the release of 16 prisoners from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners, according to President Joe Biden. The other Americans released were Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.

“Today, we celebrate the return of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir and rejoice with their families,” Biden said in a statement.

Turkish intelligence said on Aug. 1 that it was coordinating an extensive prisoner exchange between Eastern and Western blocs.

“Our organization has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) said in a statement.

The office of the Turkish president added that 10 prisoners, including two minors, had been moved to Russia, 13 to Germany, and three to the United States.

Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, before heading back to the Russian capital.

The Americans Gershkovich and Whelan were imprisoned in Russia under dubious circumstances, with Russia accusing Gershkovich and Whelan of being spies.

Speculation about a major exchange has grown in recent days, as several prominent figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

The exchange is part of a larger, 26-person prisoner swap between the United States, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Slovenia on one side, and Russia and Belarus on the other, with Turkey acting as an intermediary between the two sides.

For its part, Russia is expected to receive eight prisoners of its own back, including some with ties to Russian intelligence.

Among them is Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of murder in Germany in 2019, which the judges in his case described as an assassination ordered by Russian authorities.

Likewise, a lawyer for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian held in the United States, declined on Wednesday to confirm the whereabouts of his client to the state RIA news agency “until the exchange takes place.”

Vinnik previously pleaded guilty to money laundering in a case related to the unlawful use of $4 billion in cryptocurrency at the BTC-e exchange, for which he oversaw finances.

That same firm handled Bitcoin transactions for Fancy Bear, a Russian hacking group possibly connected to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, and which was believed to be behind cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016 and later hacks on the Ukrainian military.

Russian state media reported that Vinnik was among four Russians jailed in the United States who disappeared from a database of prisoners operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons.

It named the other three as Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenok, and Vladislav Klyushin.

Marchenko pleaded guilty to laundering money to procure equipment for the Russian military, Konoshchenok was accused of procuring American-made electronics and ammunition for the Russian military, and Klyushin was convicted of hacking U.S. companies and using the ill-gotten information to conduct stock market trades.

Klyushin, like Vinnik, was also associated with co-conspirators that the Justice department described as being involved in “a scheme to interfere with the 2016 United States elections.”

The last prisoner swap between the two nations was in 2022, at which time Moscow exchanged jailed WNBA athlete Brittney Griner for international arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2022.

By Andrew Thornebrooke

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report