Two dozen prisoners from seven countries were freed in a historic swap on Thursday, including several wrongfully detained American citizens held in Russia.
President Joe Biden called the deal, the largest since the Cold War, “a feat of diplomacy and friendship.”
Among those freed were two wrongfully detained Americans detained by Moscow – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – as well as Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist, and Vladimir Kara-Muza, a legal permanent resident. from the US
In addition to the celebration and relief of prisoners returning home, the exchange of innocent Americans for Russian criminals has sparked debate over whether this will encourage foreign adversaries to target and wrongly detain Americans for use as leverage.
“This is a credible criticism,” said ABC News contributor Elizabeth Neumann, a former Homeland Security official. “Are we really feeding the beast by doing this prisoner exchange, making it more likely that they will go and detain more people illegally so that they have a bargaining chip so that we will release anyone who can be arrested that is important. to Putin?”
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to the head of the Republic of Mordovia Artem Zdunov during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, on August 1, 2024.
Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the message sent by the prisoner swap to others “is what any official or government official in the White House would be asking for.”
“You’re doing your best to try to limit the possibility of creating incentives to seize other Americans,” he said.
In a joint statement Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the release “encouraging news” but said they “know that Russian criminal trafficking is hard on Americans who it’s okay to do nothing to mitigate Putin’s reckless behavior.”
“Without serious action to prevent further hostage-taking by Russia, Iran, and other countries hostile to the United States, the costs of hostage diplomacy will continue to rise,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi is to frame Americans on trumped-up charges to get “hancmen” jailed abroad to return, Neumann said.
A key player for Russia in this historic exchange was Vadim Krasikov, according to retired Marine Colonel Stephen Ganyard, a former US assistant secretary of state. The convicted killer was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the killing in 2019. In a February interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, Putin signaled that Russia was willing to replace Krasikov with Gershkovich.
“The Russians are on hold until they can get access to these KGB killers,” Ganyard said. “Putin will bring KGB agents home.”
Russia can be expected to continue to hold back the Americans to achieve that goal, he said.
“It’s pretty standard procedure for the Russians to have some people detained on charges that are clearly made up as a way to make sure that they definitely have some negotiating leverage or a reason for the US to want to talk to them,” Ganyard said.
This combination of file images shows (L-R, top to bottom) US journalist Evan Gershkovich in Moscow, Paul Whelan, former US Marine, in Moscow, Alsu Kurmasheva, US-Russian correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Kazan and Russia. opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza in Moscow. Gershkovich, Whelan, Kurmasheva and Kara-Murza were released by Russia on August 1, 2024, as part of a large-scale prisoner exchange.
Natalia Kolesnikovakirill Kudrya/AFP via Getty Images
Graham said it does not currently appear that there are many Russians in American prisons that the Kremlin wants back.
“I think the deal has minimal implications for anything that Russia might do as far as seizing America,” he said.
For Neumann, the negotiation of the exchange of prisoners is in this dilemma when countries encounter hostile countries, although it is often the only way to bring illegally detained citizens.
“I think that’s always the struggle when you’re doing these negotiations, figuring out if you’re creating an incentive structure,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a credible argument that the alternative is, ‘No, we’re not going to negotiate, we’re just going to let these people die in Russian prisons.’
“That’s not how we take care of our citizens,” he said.
Referring to the former President Theodore Roosevelt Quote in critics – that “credit belongs to the right people in the arena” – he said it is easy to question the prisoner exchange negotiations from the sidelines.
“But until you actually get into the arena and do the fight, you don’t really appreciate how difficult the decision is,” he said. “That’s a pretty stereotypical criticism. It’s also one that nobody has ever found a credible alternative to fulfilling our obligation to take care of American citizens who are being illegally detained.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan addressed the obligation during a White House briefing Thursday.
“It is difficult to send back a convicted criminal to secure the release of an innocent American,” he said, calling it one of the “hard decisions” involved in this exchange. “But sometimes the choice is between committing or sending the person to live in prison in a hostile foreign country or in the hands of a hostile power.”
He said that the US evaluated and analyzed the risks in this case and found that the benefits outweighed the risks. He also noted that Americans have been unjustly detained when the US participated in prisoner exchanges and when it did not.
President Joe Biden spoke about the release of Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who were detained in Russia, during a brief event attended by some of their relatives, at the White House in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2024.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
Faced with these risks, the US government is trying to warn Americans.
After freeing basketball star Brittney Griner in a prisoner exchange in 2022, Biden “strongly” urged all Americans to be careful when traveling abroad and to check the State Department’s travel advisories, including warnings about the risk of wrongful detention by foreign governments. . Russia currently has a Level 4 Do Not Travel warning from the State Department, the highest level.
“He’s very clear about the danger, because what’s going to happen next is that we’re going to see Russia take people on false charges in order to influence negotiations, or at least influence discussions with the US at some point in the future,” Ganyard said.
When asked Thursday when speaking about the prisoner exchange about how to prevent such incentives in the future, Biden replied, “I advise people not to go to certain places, say what’s at stake, what’s at stake.”
Graham said he doesn’t think Russia is just picking anyone because they need people to trade.
“It’s a person who has broken the law,” he said, pointing to Griner, who pleaded guilty to drug charges, as an example. “Americans should be aware, especially if they travel in Russia, that the laws there are different from those in the United States and that it is more difficult to prosecute certain things.”
