Alsu Kurmasheva, Evan Gershkovich, and Paul Whelan -- three of the 24 detainees involved in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War ended – have returned to the United States where they were greeted by President Joe Biden and family amid cheers from those gathered at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington, D.C.
Arriving from Turkey where part of the exchange took place on August 1, the three were part of a group of 16 prisoners Russia and its close ally Belarus released in exchange for eight Russians held in the United States and several other countries.
Biden, who earlier in the day hailed the historic exchange at a White House news conference, was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris to welcome the three as family members, colleagues, and media looked on.
Kurmasheva, a journalist for RFE/RL, Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, are all U.S. citizens.
Emotional Reunions With Family As Released Prisoners Greeted By Biden
Whelan, a former Marine, was the first to emerge from the plane and saluted Biden as he came down the steps and onto the tarmac. After saluting back and shaking hands, the president took off his lapel pin and gave it to Whelan, who had been in Russian detention for more than five years, the longest period of the three returnees.
Gershkovich, who also received applause as he embraced the president, followed, while Kurmasheva was the last of the three to come off the plane, also hugging Biden amid applause from the crowd.
The 32-year-old Gershkovich was detained in Russia in March 2023 while out on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. He was sentenced in July to 16 years in prison on spying charges that were rejected by the United States and his employer, the Wall Street Journal.
"Not bad," he replied as he greeted fellow journalists who asked how it felt to finally be home after spending 491 days in detention.
Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old mother of two, was arrested in Kazan in October 2023 and first charged with failing to register as a "foreign agent" under a punitive Russian law that targets journalists, civil society activists, and others. She was subsequently charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military and sentenced to 6 1/2 years.
In announcing the swap earlier in the day, Biden slammed Russia for conducting "show trials" that led to the imprisonment of Gershkovich, Whelan, and Kurmasheva, saying "all three were falsely accused of being spies."
When asked what he would say to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the swap, the president replied: “Stop,” a reference to taking Americans into custody on dubious charges.
Biden noted earlier that the prisoner swap required "significant concessions" from Germany, which released FSB Colonel Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of the murder in 2019 of a former Chechen militant in Berlin.
The trade came even with relations between Washington and Moscow eroding to their lowest point in decades after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The prisoner swap included dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British citizen who was imprisoned for making critical remarks about the invasion.
Kara-Murza also holds a green card, which allows a person to live and work permanently in the United States, but traveled first to Germany where he and two other Russian activists, Andrei Pivovarov and Ilya Yashin, held a news conference in which they vowed to continue fighting for a free Russia.
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"Alsu, Evan, Paul, Vladimir and others, you belong home with your families and loved ones!" European Council President Charles Michel said in a post on X. "I thank all those, also in Europe, who helped to make the diplomatic deal possible. EU will continue supporting and standing for all those illegally detained in Russia and elsewhere."
After spending time with family and friends, Kurmasheva, Gershkovich, and Whelan traveled on to San Antonio, Texas, for medical treatment and debriefing by U.S. officials.
The release of 16 people from Russia and Belarus included five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country.
In an interview with RFE/RL's North.Realities service, the parents of Ksenia Fadeyeva, another of the Russian activists released by Moscow in the exchange, said the first time they suspected something was in the works was when they began hearing more and more about the topic of prisoner exchanges in the media.
"She certainly didn’t think she’d be released like this. Neither did we. It's just some kind of miracle," said her mother, Iryna Fadeyeva.
Ksenia Fadeyeva, 32, is a former local lawmaker and the former head of the late opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's regional office in the Siberian city of Tomsk. In December 2023, she was convicted on charges including organizing activities of an extremist group and was handed a nine-year prison term. She is now in Germany after the exchange but did not appear at the news conference in Bonn with Kara-Murza, Pivovarov, and Yashin.
"We don't know anything for sure yet, but we are ordinary citizens, not military personnel, without restrictions on entering and exiting the country. I think they will let us see each other," her father, Vladislav Fadeyev, said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the decision to release Krasikov, a convicted hit man, had been difficult.
"Nobody took this decision to deport a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years...lightly," Scholz said, speaking in Cologne, Germany, on August 1.
"The state's interest in seeing him punished had to be weighed against the danger to the bodies and in some cases the lives of innocent people in prison in Russia and political prisoners," he told reporters.
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Biden said Germany asked for nothing in exchange. The president added that the prisoner swap was "a powerful example of why it is important to have friends in the world."
While those released celebrated, they also said they remained concerned for others who weren't included in the swap.
Marc Fogel, a 62-year-old English teacher, is one such case.
He was arrested at an airport in Moscow in 2021 for carrying about half an ounce of medical marijuana he said he had been prescribed to manage severe pain following surgeries on his back, shoulder, and knee. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison after prosecutors claimed he intended to sell the drugs to his students.
Marc Fogel
Senior U.S. officials said they tried to include Fogel in the exchange, but Russia rejected his inclusion.
That did little to help calm the despair Fogel's family felt after word came that he would not be returning home with the others. In a statement after the deal was made public, his family said it was "inconceivable" that he had not been part and urged the Biden administration to make his release a priority.
Poland, Slovenia, and Norway also played roles in the swap by releasing Russians back to Moscow that they held.
Turkey, a NATO ally that also has warm relations with Moscow, was heavily involved in facilitating talks on the swap, with Ankara hosting the actual exchange of the prisoners.