Biden and Harris to meet freed Americans arriving in the US after Russia prisoner exchange – live | Russia

How Evan Gershkovich was finally freed after a 500-day odyssey in Russia’s prison system

Andrew Roth

Evan Gershkovich was on a reporting trip deep in the Russian regions when the FSB came for him. The Wall Street Journal reporter was in Yekaterinburg, more than 850 miles from the Russian capital, when agents approached his table at a local bistro. As they frog-marched him out of the restaurant, the officers pulled Gershkovich’s shirt over his head to obscure his identity, witnesses said. The signal was clear: this was no ordinary arrest.

That began a nearly 500-day odyssey in Russia’s notorious prison system for Gershkovich, the first reporter to be arrested and charged with espionage since the cold war. The Russian government said Gershkovich had been recruited by the CIA to collect information about the country’s larger producer of main battle tanks, Uralvagonzavod.

The ensuing year of negotiations pulled in hundreds of other people, including Russian political prisoners and Russian spies held abroad, friends and family to provide support, negotiators on both sides, a Russian billionaire reportedly acting as broker in the exchange, as well as the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died amid rumours that the west had presented Putin with a grand deal to free Krasikov and Gershkovich in a three-way trade back in February.

Pjotr Sauer

Putin barely hid his true aim throughout this ordeal: to free a man named Vadim Krasikov, who was until today serving a life sentence for the assassination of a Chechen rebel commander in Berlin’s Tiergarten.

In his interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Putin described Krasikov as “a person who eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals, due to patriotic sentiments”. But a little digging into his background suggested Krasikov was likely an elite FSB assassin tasked with murdering Putin’s opponents abroad. He was caught red-handed after the attack, having been spotted by passersby.

“Putin had become maniacal about getting Krasikov back; he really, really wanted Krasikov,” a source with knowledge of Kremlin deliberations on the issue told the Guardian earlier this year. “It was a symbol that we don’t abandon our people. He killed someone for us and we want people like that to know that they will be fought for to get them back.”

The largest prisoner swap between Russia and the US since the cold war took place on Thursday with the release of 16 people from Russian and Belarusian jails, in exchange for eight Russians.

Here’s a recap of the main developments:

• Among those freed from Russian custody include the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the former US marine Paul Whelan and the journalist and joint US-Russian citizen Alsu Kurmasheva. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, are expected to personally receive them when they arrive at Joint Base Andrews later tonight.

• The exchange also included the release of the Russian-opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, and several other opposition figures including the British-Russian politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and three people who had worked for the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in prison earlier this year.

• Alexei Navalny was meant to be a part of the exchange deal before his death in February, the US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, told reporters.

• Among the prisoners returning to Russia was the assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been held in a German prison since 2019 for murdering a Chechen exile in Berlin in broad daylight. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said freeing Krasikov had not been an easy decision, but in the end was deemed a sacrifice worth making.

• Several deep-cover Russian “illegal” spies arrested in Norway and Slovenia were swapped, along with Russians held on criminal charges in US jails. Here is the full list of people who were involved in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the west.

• The exchange on Thursday occurred at Ankara airport in Turkey, and involved people held in seven different countries including the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus. The Turkish presidency said 10 prisoners were relocated to Russia, 13 prisoners to Germany and three to the US.

• The US president, Joe Biden, said the exchange deal was made possible by a “feat of diplomacy and friendship”. He thanked Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey for their help in bringing the deal together. Speaking from the White House and surrounded by family members of the freed prisoners, Biden asked the room to sing happy birthday to 12-year-old Miriam, daughter of Alsu Kurmasheva, who he said is turning 13 on Friday.

• The swap is likely to be considered a political coup for Biden in the waning months of his presidency, and a blow to Donald Trump, who has claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that he would free Gershkovich if re-elected.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, meeting the returning Russian prisoners, said the Kremlin had “not forgotten about you for a minute” and said that all of those involved in military service would receive state awards.

• The editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, described the event as a “joyous day” for friends, family and colleagues of Gershkovich, and the “the millions of well-wishers in the US and around the world who stood with Evan and defended the free press”.

Brittney Griner, the US basketball star who was imprisoned in Russia for 10 months before her release in 2022 as part of a prisoner exchange, said she is “head over heels” that fellow Americans are coming home from Russia.

“Great day. It’s a great day. It’s a great day,” Griner said after the US women beat Belgium in the Paris Olympic Games quarter-finals, AP reported.

We’ll talk more about it later. But head-over-heels happy for the families right now. Any day that Americans come home, that’s a win. That’s a win.

Griner was released in December 2022 as part of a deal in which she was swapped for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

She was arrested in February 2022 at an airport in Russia after authorities said she was carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil. The US state department declared her to be wrongfully detained.