Biden Secures Release of Gershkovich and Whelan Before Announcing End of Re-election Campaign
Evelyn Hockstein/AFP/Getty Images
President Joe Biden finalized the deal to get Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan released from Russian captivity about an hour before he announced he was ending his re-election campaign.
The prisoner swap, which saw Gershkovich and Whelan return to the U.S., took place five months after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison camp. Despite the tragic turn in Navalny’s case, the U.S. and Germany continued to work on securing the release of other prisoners, culminating in Biden’s surprise announcement, reported the Wall Street Journal.
“President Biden — about an hour before he notified the world he was dropping out of the presidential race on July 21 — called the prime minister of Slovenia, whose country was contributing two convicted Russian spies to the swap, to secure the pardon necessary for the deal to proceed,” the newspaper reported. “CIA Director William Burns traveled to Turkey last week to meet his counterpart there and finalize the logistics for the swap.”
Details of the deal remain closely held, but American officials familiar with the talks said Russia insisted on the return of convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced to life in prison by a German court in 2021 for killing a Georgian asylum seeker who had fought against Russia in Chechnya.
The deal also included the return of two Russians held in Slovenia, one in Poland, and another in Norway, all of whom U.S. officials say have ties to Kremlin intelligence. Gershkovich and Whelan had both been convicted of espionage, a charge they denied. The U.S. State Department had classified them as wrongfully detained.
A breakthrough in negotiations came in February when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Biden in the Oval Office. They discussed a potential offer to Russia that would have included Krasikov, Whelan, Gershkovich, and Navalny. “For you, I will do this,” Scholz told Biden, according to a senior administration official.
However, Navalny died seven days later under mysterious circumstances, causing the initial offer to collapse before it was presented to Moscow. Vice President Kamala Harris then met privately with Scholz at a conference in Munich to stress the importance of releasing Krasikov and continued negotiations with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob.
The negotiations continued into the summer before Biden finalized the deal. Shortly after, he released a statement announcing that he would not seek re-election and endorsed his vice president for the Democratic nomination.
