WASHINGTON – It was December 2022 and the U.S. government's chief hostage negotiator had just delivered Brittney Griner back to America after her 10-month imprisonment in Russia. Roger Carstens went to his hotel room anticipating a quick snooze after several sleepless days and had just put his head on the pillow when the phone rang.
On the other end was Paul Whelan from Russia, asking why the trade that brought home Griner had left him behind.
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The call was a reminder that a deal heralded for bringing home a celebrated professional athlete had left neither side fully satisfied. The U.S. still needed to bring back Whelan, who was serving a lengthy prison sentence on espionage charges that Washington considered bogus. Russia had its eyes set on someone too: an assassin jailed in Germany named Vadim Krasikov. Further negotiations were needed, culminating Thursday in a 24-person blockbuster swap.
That the latest exchange included both Whelan and Krasikov was no small thing.
It required the U.S. to regroup after the unexpected death in February of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who'd been seen as a cog in a potential exchange. It depended on the willingness of Germany to release a Russian who just five years earlier had committed a cold-blooded killing on its soil, and for other European countries to give up prisoners. And it forced Russia to part with Americans, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, it had stockpiled as trade bait.
And just like every other deal before it, it required the U.S. and its allies to reluctantly accept that the price of freeing people they regarded as clearly innocent was to release prisoners determined to be clearly guilty.
U.S. officials had known for some time that Krasikov would be essential to any deal for Whelan — and later Gershkovich.
Russia raised him relentlessly. President Vladimir Putin called him a “patriot,” perhaps sensing an opportunity to signal how far Russia would go to bring home anyone who might get caught acting on the country's behalf.
When Krasikov was sentenced in 2021, German judges determined that his killing two years earlier of a Georgian citizen who'd fought Russian troops in Chechnya was no random hit but rather ordered by the Russian secret services, which had given him a false identity, passport and the resources to carry out the murder. On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov identified Krasikov as an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB — a fact reported in the West even as Moscow denied state involvement.
“Over the course of this negotiation, we did reach the conclusion that Krasikov was a key," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
The U.S. had previously shown a willingness to release from its own prisons significant criminals, including a Taliban drug lord and notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout, as part of prisoner swaps. But Krasikov was held by Germany, where government officials initially balked at the idea.
The ground changed with the emergence of an unlikely candidate for Russia to trade.
Navalny, Russia’s best-known opposition politician, was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated. He had close ties with Germany and had been treated there while recovering from a Russian poisoning attempt. The parties pressed forward on a deal involving Navalny and Krasikov that would unlock Gershkovich and Whelan and satisfy a core and unshakeable Russian demand.
In January, President Joe Biden called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and invited him to the Oval Office with plans to discuss the detainees. They met in early February. Speaking about the prospect of a prisoner deal, Scholz told Biden words to the effect of “For you, I will do this,” according to Sullivan and a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity
But Navalny's unexpected death later that month in an Arctic penal colony left U.S. officials feeling like “the wind had been taken out of our sails," given the way it stalled momentum, said the senior administration official. Even Putin after Navalny's death said he had supported the idea of a swap involving Navalny.
On the day of Navalny’s death, Sullivan was coincidentally scheduled to meet with Gershkovich’s family about the outlines of the emerging deal. After the Russian opposition leader was found dead, officials were forced back to the drawing board to develop an arrangement acceptable to all parties.
Furtive swap discussions continued unfolding between U.S. officials, including Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and their European counterparts.
Various foreign ministers were asked who they had in custody that the Russians might want. During the course of negotiations, the White House developed lists of political prisoners in Russia who might be of interest to Germany and also proposed to Germany exchanges that didn’t include Krasikov.
By spring, Sullivan and the U.S. team thought they had a workable plan. What they needed was approval from Germany. Sullivan drafted a letter for Biden to send to Scholz with the outlines of the proposal.
In recent weeks, a series of unusual confluences suggested that a deal was in the air, including a startlingly quick trial for Gershkovich last month that resulted in him being sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
In a trial that concluded in two days in secrecy in the same week as Gershkovich’s, Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist who was also included in the deal,was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military — allegations that her family, employer and U.S. officials rejected. And several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.
Biden later said Germany asked for nothing in return, holding the conversation up as a testament to the need for strong and stable alliances, though the final deal did include the release of multiple German nationals.
There were still other pieces to work out.
Even as Biden was making one of the most consequential decisions of his political life — to abandon his reelection bid — he was simultaneously working to build cooperation from allies to get a deal done. An hour before he posted his letter on July 21 announcing he wouldn’t seek another term, Sullivan said, Biden was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart seeking to secure her agreement to release a pair of Russian sleeper agents as part of the deal. (Norway and Poland also each released prisoners to Russia).
In an interview with The Associated Press, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said he viewed the deal as a means to support democratic forces and human rights activists inside Russia, but also as a way to strengthen solidarity between Western allies.
“Maybe one day in the future we will be remembered when we have somebody we need to get out,” he said.
In recent days, CIA Director Bill Burns visited Turkey to meet with his counterpart to negotiate the handoff logistics.
Early Thursday, six U.S.-registered private jets converged on Ankara, the Turkish capital, from Washington Dulles International Airport, Poland, Slovenia, Germany and Norway carrying the Russian prisoners to be handed over and preparing to take the freed Americans and other detainees back to their home countries.
The Biden administration had quietly summoned the families of the detained Americans to the White House in the days before the swap, insisting on secrecy. While a complicated dance played out to complete the swap on the tarmac half a world away, the families waited in the White House for the first word their loved ones were out of Russian hands.
Biden himself broke the news to the families in the Oval Office once he got firm confirmation by speaking to the Americans in Ankara.
“I said, ‘Welcome almost home,’” Biden told reporters later. He then swiftly turned the phone over to their loved ones. Joined by the families at a news conference trumpeting the deal, he led the audience in singing “Happy Birthday” to one of Kurmesheva's daughters.
Hovering over the deal was a recognition of its innate imbalance: The U.S. and other Western nations had given up people seen as properly convicted, or at least charged, of crimes including murder; Russia released journalists, dissidents and others regarded by the West as held on trumped-on charges.
“It is difficult to send back a convicted criminal to secure the release of an innocent American,” Sullivan conceded to reporters Thursday. Even The Wall Street Journal's top editor, Emma Tucker, acknowledged that reality, writing in a letter published online that the swap's terms were “predictable as the only solution given President Putin’s cynicism.”
For the families, though, the immediate focus remained on being reunited with their loved ones.
A plane carrying the American detainees touched down before midnight at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington, with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on hand for their arrival.
Gershkvovich hugged both, then turned his attention to his mother, Ella Milman, who quickened her pace as she approached him with wide-open arms. He embraced her, hoisting her into the air in celebration.
The freed Americans lingered on the steamy tarmac to soak up the moment of their return to the U.S. They took selfies with family members and friends, shared hugs with Biden and Harris, and patted loved ones on the back. At one point, Biden gave Whelan the flag pin off his own lapel.
“I feel great,” Whelan said. “It's a long time coming.”
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Associated Press writer David Keyton in Stockholm contributed to this report.