The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
By by Eric Tucker, Dasha Litvinova and Matthew Lee, Associated PressThis photo combination shows, in the centre, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and clockwise from top left are Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, corporate security executive and former U.S.
The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries. But the release of Americans has come at a price: Russia has secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the U.S. considers bogus.
President Joe Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.
Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations. U.S. officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.
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