Russia releases American journalist and other Americans and dissidents in mass prisoner swap involving 24 people

WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia completed the largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow freeing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow countryman Paul Whelan, as well as dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza. Twenty-four people were freed under an international agreement, officials said.

The deal came after years of secret, behind-the-scenes negotiations, even as relations between Washington and Moscow were at their lowest point since the Cold War, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The sweeping deal, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. over the past two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries, was heralded by President Joe Biden as a diplomatic achievement in the final months of his administration. But freeing the Americans came at a price: Russia secured the freedom of its citizens convicted of serious crimes in the West by swapping them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the U.S. considers false.

Under the agreement, Russia released Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was imprisoned in 2023 and convicted in July on espionage charges that he and the U.S. have vehemently denied and said were unfounded; Whelan, a corporate security executive in Michigan who has been imprisoned since 2018 on espionage charges that he and Washington deny; and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen who was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, charges her family and employer have denied.

The freed dissidents included Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer serving a 25-year sentence for high treason widely seen as politically motivated, 11 political prisoners held in Russia, including associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and a German citizen arrested in Belarus.

The Russian side captured Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.

Russia has also taken back two alleged sleeper agents who were imprisoned in Slovenia, as well as three men charged by federal authorities in the U.S., including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence agent who supplied U.S. electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway has repatriated an academic arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy, and Poland has also repatriated a detained man.

Thursday’s exchange of 24 prisoners dwarfed a 2010 deal that involved 14. Under that swap, Washington freed 10 Russians living in the U.S. as sleepers, while Moscow deported four Russians living at home, including Sergei Skripal, a double agent who worked with British intelligence. He and his daughter were nearly killed by a nerve agent poisoning in 2018 that was blamed on Russian agents.

Speculation had been growing for weeks that an exchange was imminent because of a confluence of extraordinary events, including a surprisingly quick trial and conviction of Gershkovich, which Washington dismissed as a farce. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

In a trial that ended in secret over two days the same week as Gershkovich’s trial, Kurmasheva was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employer and U.S. officials did not acknowledge.

Also in recent days, several other people imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or for collaborating with Navalny have been transferred from prisons to undisclosed locations.

Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities said, without providing any evidence, that he was gathering classified information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigrants who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hearings on extensions of pretrial detention or appeals of release. He was taken to court in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.

U.S. officials made an offer last year to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and the Democratic Biden administration has not disclosed any possible agreements since then.

Gershkovich was found to have been falsely detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges that he and the U.S. also said were false and fabricated, and served a 16-year prison sentence.

Whelan has been excluded from previous high-profile deals involving Russia, including Moscow’s April 2022 swap of imprisoned Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of a drug conspiracy. In December of that year, the U.S. freed notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been imprisoned on drug possession charges.