Biden seeks diplomacy in prisoner swap, Putin may see different lesson

Washington: The release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and other prisoners detained by Russia was a legacy-defining moment for Joe Biden.

Eleven days after his remarkable decision to drop out of the US election, America’s now lame-duck president had one of the most important breakthroughs of his time in office – thanks in large part to the global alliances he’s worked so hard to foster.

US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greet reporter Evan Gershkovich at Andrews Air Force Base on Friday (AEST).Credit: AP

After months of painstaking negotiations, the US and Russia completed the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, involving 24 prisoners and six countries.

Among the people now freed by Russia is 32-year-old Gershkovich, who was working as a correspondent in Moscow in March 2023 when he was detained on sham spy charges, and sentenced last month in a closed-door trial to 16 years in prison, simply for doing his job.

Fellow American Paul Whelan, who has been in Russia since 2018 on similar bogus espionage charges, has also been released, alongside Russian-British political activist and Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was arrested in April 2022 after speaking out about the war in Ukraine.

Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual US-Russia citizenship, arrived on American soil shortly before midnight on Thursday (Friday AEST) for a joyful reunion with their families. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also greeted them.

Evan Gershkovich, left, Alsu Kurmasheva, right, Paul Whelan, second from right, and others aboard a plane home after being freed.Credit: AP

“The deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy – and friendship,” Biden said earlier at the White House on Thursday, flanked by some of the family members of the Americans his administration helped free.

“Multiple countries helped get this done. They joined a difficult and complex relationship at my request and I, personally, thank them.”

Difficult and complex is an understatement for a deal that was brokered at a time when relations between Washington and Moscow had hit a new low following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Negotiators in back-channel talks at one point even explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February, they ended up going back to the drawing board.

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza is escorted to a hearing in a court in Moscow in 2023.Credit: AP

Eventually, Moscow agreed to release 16 journalists, dissidents and other political prisoners in exchange for eight of its own Russian nationals: from convicted killers and computer hackers, to Kremlin spies.

But this inherent imbalance also required several concessions from America’s European allies - and countless hours of delicate diplomacy by Biden and vice president Kamala Harris.

Indeed, on the afternoon of July 21 – not long before he announced his decision to quit the race for the White House against Donald Trump – Biden held a critical call with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob, whose country was holding two convicted spies that Russia wanted back, to secure the pardon needed so the deal could go ahead.

He also leaned heavily on Germany, whose country had jailed the man Putin wanted most: convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been serving a life sentence in Berlin for the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in broad daylight.

US and German officials had spent months talking through what it would take to release Krasikov, knowing that there would be political opposition in Germany if the West was willing to trade a cold-blooded hitman to bring its citizens home.

But Biden also held several phone calls and in-person meetings with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to get him over the line, including a rushed February 9 bilateral at the White House.

In the end, decades of foreign policy experience paid off for America’s oldest president, and Scholz agreed to release Krasikov without anything in return.

“I particularly owe a great sense of gratitude to the chancellor,” Biden said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Vadim Krasikov upon arrival of freed Russian prisoners at Vnukovo government airport outside Moscow, Russia.Credit: AP

“The demands they were making of me required me to get some significant concessions from Germany, which they (Germany) originally concluded they could not do because of the person in question. But everybody stepped up. Poland stepped up. Slovenia stepped up. Turkey stepped up. It matters to have these relationships; it really does.”

The diplomatic accomplishment makes a statement in an election coloured by Trump’s suspicion for global alliances.

Krasikov was one of eight freed Russians convicted of violations widely accepted as criminal in the West.

Roman Seleznev, the son of a Russian MP, was also released. Seleznev was convicted in the US in 2017 of hacking into more than 500 businesses and stealing millions of credit card numbers, which he then sold on websites. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $US170 million in restitution to his victims.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, centre back to a camera, arrives to meet released Russian prisoners at the Vnukovo government airport outside Moscow, Russia.Credit: AP

Another freed prisoner, Vladislav Klyushin, was a wealthy businessman with ties to the Kremlin, who was convicted in Boston in 2023 of charges including wire fraud and securities fraud in a nearly $100 million scheme that relied on secret earnings information stolen via hacking US computer networks.

There are still also many unanswered questions, such as why the Russians are making this exchange now, or what it might mean for countless others who remain wrongly detained under Putin, such as US teacher Marc Fogel and ballerina Ksenia Karelina.

One school of thought is that Putin wants to assert his strength – note for example his red carpet embrace of his convicted assassin – while showing the world that the West is willing to trade in flesh despite the arrest of foreigners on minor, baseless charges, which has given him leverage to extract what he wants from global leaders.

Whatever his motives, today’s two-for-one prison swap deal was a diplomatic victory for an exiting president whose administration has brought home over 70 Americans wrongfully detained abroad – and has made it his mission to keep negotiating even in his final days.

“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” Biden said, perhaps in a nod to Trump.

“Friends you can trust, work with, and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this.”

with AP

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