Who is Paul Whelan, the U.S. Marine released in a prisoner exchange in Russia after spending five years in prison?

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan came to international attention when he was arrested by Russian authorities in December 2018 on espionage charges.

The head of Michigan’s state security service spent more than five years in a Russian prison — and continued to suffer behind bars as other inmates, including WNBA star Britney Griner, were released.

He finally returned to the United States on August 1, 2024, when he and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich were released as part of a historic prisoner exchange.

Early life

Paul Nicholas Whelan was born on March 5, 1970, in Ottawa, Ontario, his twin brother, David, told the Detroit Free Press.

According to the BBC, Whelan’s parents were British citizens of Irish descent.

Besides his twin brother, he had another brother and a sister.

Whelan eventually moved to Michigan and obtained Canadian, American, Irish and British citizenship – the latter two thanks to his parents’ ancestry.

Law Enforcement Career

As reported by the Washington Post, Whelan began his law enforcement career in the early 1990s.

According to the website, in a 2013 deposition in connection with the case in which Whelan was not involved, he claimed to have been a Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputy and a Chelsea city police officer.

However, the Washtenaw County sheriff’s officer had no employment records, and Chelsea police would only disclose that he worked part-time as an officer, dispatcher, crosswalk warden and parking lot warden from 1990 to 1996.

Julie LeBourdais, a former colleague of Whelan’s at the Keego Harbor Police Department, remembered him as “straight as an arrow.”

From 1998 to 2000, Whelan worked at Keego Harbor as a patrol officer, she said.

LeBourdais recalled that Whelan seemed very knowledgeable about global affairs.

Military career

As reported by the Washington Post, Whelan enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1994.

He took a military leave of absence from his position as an IT manager at recruiting firm Kelly Services to work full time from 2003 to 2008, including a tour of duty in Iraq.

As reported by The Washington Post, one of the people who served with Whelan in the mission recalled that he studied Russian and wrote Cyrillic on a blackboard, and that he visited Moscow and St. Petersburg while on leave.

Whelan had reached the rank of sergeant when he was convicted by a military court in January 2008 of a number of charges, including attempted theft, three counts of dereliction of duty, making false statements to an official, unlawfully using another person’s Social Security number and 10 counts of issuing checks with insufficient funds.

Military records show Whelan was sentenced to 60 days of restricted freedom and had his pay docked.

He was given a bad conduct discharge and discharged from the Marine Corps on December 2, 2008, with the rank of private.

The Marines declined to provide further information about the charges following Whelan’s arrest.

After his discharge, Whelan moved into corporate security and eventually became senior manager of global security and investigations at Kelly Services.

As reported by The Washington Post, in a 2013 deposition, he described his duties as overseeing company security matters, including allegations of employee misconduct, building security and access to company decisions.

Neither Kelly Services nor BorgWarner, the company where Whelan worked at the time of his arrest, had any documents confirming his business trips to Russia.

Arrest in Moscow

Paul Whelan was arrested in the Moscow region by the Federal Security Bureau of Russia (FSB) on December 28, 2018.

He arrived in the Russian capital on December 22 to attend the former marine’s wedding at the famous Metropol Moscow Hotel.

He was scheduled to return home on January 6 via St. Petersburg, David Whelan told the Detroit Free Press.

Whelan’s family members told the BBC that he had travelled to Russia numerous times in the past and boasted of a close relationship with an FSB agent.

He claimed he visited the man’s home in the winter before his arrest and loaned him more than $1,140 for his upcoming wedding.

The FSB insisted the payment was in fact for intelligence purposes – an allegation Whelan has repeatedly denied.

Whelan insisted that his friend – later identified by the Russian newspaper Kommersant as Ilya Yatsenko – had set him up by showing up at the Metropol Hotel accompanied by police officers.

U.S. authorities have also denied the espionage allegations against Whelan, and multiple sources have indicated that his disciplinary record makes him an unlikely candidate for an intelligence officer.

“As is the case with all Russian propaganda, 90 percent of the story is true and the rest is lies,” former CIA officer Dan Hoffman suggested in an interview with The Washington Post.

A mock trial

Whelan was formally charged on January 3, 2019.

According to CNN, he had been held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, where since March 2019 he had been sharing a cell with a fellow inmate who did not speak English.

As reported by the New York Times, Whelan’s lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenko, initially suggested the possibility of exchanging Whelan for Maria Butina, a Russian politician who was imprisoned in the U.S. for acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Whelan was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison on June 20, 2020.

During the hearing — which he followed with the help of an interpreter — Whelan held a paper sign denouncing the trial as a “farce.”

“This is slimy, greasy, dirty Russian politics. Nothing more. Nothing less,” he lamented.

As of December 2020, Whelan was held at IK-17, a high-security prison located eight hours southeast of Moscow, according to the BBC.

Confinement

Whelan and his family spent five years campaigning for his release.

“Why was nothing more done to secure my release?”

Whelan demanded the same from President Biden after the April 2022 prisoner exchange that resulted in the release of another American veteran, Trevor Reed.

In a separate statement, Whelan’s family said news of Reed’s release from Moscow had stirred “a variety of emotions” for their relative, who “has already spent three and a quarter years as a Russian hostage.”

Whelan also found herself at the center of a diplomatic storm that followed the February 2022 arrest of WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was caught by Russian authorities with trace amounts of cannabis oil in her luggage.

In July of this year, Biden proposed trading Whelan and Griner for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout — but Russia also demanded the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for killing a Kremlin dissident in Germany.

The U.S. and Russia ultimately agreed to exchange only Griner and Bout, whom Russia treated equally because both were criminals.

Because Russia viewed Whelan as an American agent, the Kremlin refused to grant an exchange unless it received a prisoner of similar standing.

Whelan’s relatives said Griner’s release in December 2022 was a “disaster for Paul,” though his brother David Whelan added that he agreed with Biden’s decision to accept the offer that was made rather than wait for “the one that wasn’t going to happen.”

“I can’t imagine he has any hope that the government will negotiate his freedom at this point. It’s clear that the US government has no concessions that the Russian government will make for Paul Whelan. And so Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes,” David added.

Shortly after Griner returned to the country, the Biden administration said negotiations for Whelan were still ongoing.

Meanwhile, Whelan continued to endure life in a Russian penal colony. In November 2023 — nearly five years after his detention — he was attacked while working at a sewing table in the prisoner block, his twin brother said.

Historical edition

Whelan, 54, was one of more than 20 prisoners released in a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the West on August 1, 2024.

The deal – the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War – also saw the release of 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, as well as Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was detained in October 2023.

Whelan’s family learned of his release from Biden at the White House the morning of the announcement, officials said.

“Our family is grateful to the United States government for making Paul’s release a reality,” the Whelans said in a statement.

“Paul was held hostage for 2,043 days. His case was that of an American in distress, held by the Russian Federation as part of their failed initiative to use people as pawns to force concessions,” they added.

The exchange of Whelan and the other prisoners took place at Ankara airport in Turkey.

Shortly after the swap, he, Gershkovich, and Kurmasheva were photographed with an American flag.