Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and Alsu Kurmasheva Are Back in the United States

Commentary by Danielle Gilbert

Published August 6, 2024

This commentary was originally published in Good Authority on August 3, 2023.

On Thursday, a massive and complex prisoner exchange marked a breakthrough in hostage diplomacy between Russia and the West. Sixteen prisoners held in Russia-including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan-are free in the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War.

This historic trade marks the latest chapter in hostage diplomacy, when governments use their criminal justice systems to take foreigners hostage.

In order to secure the release of Americans held hostage in Russia, the Biden administration negotiated a broad and complicated bargain involving two dozen prisoners. Thursday's news was the culmination of months of secret, high-stakes negotiations across seven countries.

Who's Coming Home?

The two dozen prisoners released include journalists, dissidents, criminals, and spies. As part of the deal, Russia (with Belarus) released sixteen prisoners, including three American hostages:

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while he was reporting on assignment in Moscow. In a closed hearing, Russian authorities charged Gershkovich with espionage and, in July 2024, sentenced him to 16 years in a Russian penal colony.

Paul Whelan, a former marine, was attending a wedding in Moscow in 2018 when he was arrested. Two years later, he was charged with espionage and later sentenced to 16 years of hard labor. Since Whelan's 2018 arrest, the Biden administration has negotiated two other prisoner swap deals with Russia, bringing other wrongfully detained Americans home. But Whelan was not included in either deal, leading many to criticize the Biden administration for leaving him behind.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested in Russia in 2023. Less than two weeks ago, Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in a Russian penal colony for "spreading false information" about the Russian military.

Russia also released several prominent dissidents detained for their opposition to the Putin regime, including Vladimir Kara-Murza. The Russian-British Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist was charged with treason for speaking out against Russia's war in Ukraine.

In exchange, the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, and Norway released Russian citizens and agents serving sentences for a wide array of crimes. News reports suggest one specific prisoner was key to the deal: Germany released Vadim Krasikov, a Federal Security Service (FSB) assassin arrested for murdering a former Chechen militant in a Berlin park, in broad daylight. Slovenia also released Artyom and Anna Dultsev, former agents of FSB's "illegals" program, made popular by the hit FX show, The Americans.

Familiar Territory

As I've previously written here, hostage diplomacy is on the rise, as China, Iran, Russia, and other governments increasingly hold foreigners hostage under the color and guise of law. Russian hostage diplomacy in particular has taken the spotlight, with several high-profile arrests and prisoner swaps in the last few years.

In February 2022, Russian authorities detained WNBA star Brittney Griner on charges of international drug smuggling. Two months later, the Kremlin authorized a prisoner swap for another American prisoner, former marine Trevor Reed, who had been arrested for allegedly assaulting a Russian police officer. To secure Reed's release, the U.S. government freed Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year sentence on drug smuggling charges. In December 2022, Griner came home from Russian imprisonment, in exchange for the release of convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Biden's Diplomacy at Work

These earlier arrests and trades set some expectations for how the Biden administration would handle Russian hostage diplomacy.

The U.S. State Department designated these American prisoners "wrongfully detained." This signals that the U.S. government and the State Department's Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) would prioritize efforts to bring them home. (Without the "wrongfully detained" designation, the State Department's Consular Affairs Bureau can provide limited assistance to Americans arrested abroad.)

Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, the U.S. government maintained official channels, using diplomats and CIA officials to negotiate prisoner exchanges. And Biden regularly stated that his administration had "no higher priority" than recovering Americans unjustly held abroad.

Like Reed and Griner before them, both Whelan and Gershkovich were designated as wrongfully detained by the U.S. secretary of state. The president and other senior officials regularly stressed that they were committed to bringing the Americans home.

More Players, More Pie

Thursday's prisoner exchange, however, also represents a remarkable shift in combating hostage diplomacy. Here are three key points:

First, Thursday's deal depended entirely on the cooperation of a half-dozen countries in order to bring the Americans home. According to extensive reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the Kremlin would not release Evan Gershkovich unless they received Vadim Krasikov in return-a release that depended entirely on Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. Germany's concession was the biggest hurdle to the deal, and rightly so. After all, hostage taking depends on leveraging human captivity to coerce a target to change their behavior. In this case, however, the target country (the United States) could not make the concession alone.

In addition to Germany, Biden brought together leaders from Poland, Slovenia, and Norway to convince them to release imprisoned Russian criminals. The U.S. negotiators also coordinated with Turkey, which provided the staging ground for the prisoner exchange. In remarks about the deal, Biden emphasized the importance of having friends and allies in the world as crucial to orchestrating such a complicated agreement.

Second, this deal epitomizes the negotiation tactic of expanding the pie: negotiators found agreement by putting more issues-and people-on the table. While recent deals with Russia have seen single prisoners come home, this deal was only made possible by finding more prisoners to release.

And third, Thursday's deal went beyond releasing hostages and Americans "wrongfully detained." The United States also pushed for the release of Russian dissidents and political prisoners held for their opposition to the Putin regime. These opposition figures and human rights advocates, many of whom worked closely with Alexei Navalny, were imprisoned not for foreign leverage, but for their perceived domestic threat. By including so many political prisoners in this deal, its architects invoked the "moral imperative" to save their lives.

Who Was Left Behind?

Three Americans came home on Thursday, but others remain in Russian detention. Marc Fogel, an American teacher, was arrested on drug smuggling charges in 2021. He's serving a 14-year sentence. Russian-American Ksenia Karelina, accused of donating money to a Ukrainian charity, was arrested in January 2024 while visiting her family in Yekaterinburg. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

Fogel and Karelina top a list of Americans still detained in Russia that also includes Robert Romanov Woodland, Gordon Black, Robert Gilman, David Barnes, Eugene Spector, and Michael Travis Leake.

To date, none of these detainees have (publicly) received the "wrongfully detained" designation from the State Department, though it's not impossible that they might in the future. Without the designation, however, their cases would not come under SPEHA's purview-seemingly a key step in bringing Americans home.

Danielle Gilbert is an assistant professor at Northwestern University and a fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project. She is a commissioner for the CSIS Commission on Hostage Taking and Wrongful Detention.

Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2024 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

Programs & Projects