Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and others have been released from Russian prisons as part of a major prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration.
Russia freed Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine arrested in 2018, in a multicountry prisoner exchange that involved 24 prisoners, Turkish officials said Thursday. Follow live. https://t.co/AqnlWkhekf pic.twitter.com/ccp83kMmZc
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 1, 2024
From the New York Times:
For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow freed prominent dissidents as part of a swap; 16 people in total were released from Russian custody.
In exchange, eight people were freed by the West, after a complex web of negotiations that took place behind the scenes for months among nations that are otherwise bitterly at odds over Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The deal freed Mr. Gershkovich, 32, who had spent 16 months in a Russian prison; Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, a Russian American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was also arrested last year; and Paul Whelan, 54, a former U.S. Marine arrested in 2018.
The Wall Street Journal
reports Biden was on the phone with foreign leaders working to finalize the prisoner swap an hour before he announced he would drop out of the presidential race. Read the full report at the New York Times.
Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza are coming home. pic.twitter.com/wWGA83Ss8A
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 1, 2024
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