The scenes tugged at the heart strings. Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter nabbed during a reporting assignment by Russian police last year on bogus charges of espionage, was finally reunited with his mother on an airport tarmac after spending about a year and a half in the Russian prison system. On the same flight, Paul Whelan, another American picked up by Russia’s security services for spying, set foot on American soil for the first time in more than five years. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greeted them, smiling ear to ear.
When all was said and done, the United States, Russia and five other countries finalized the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War. The United States and its allies got back 16 prisoners, including the Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and the dissident writer Vladimir Kara-Murza. The Russians received eight individuals.
There were complications, nuances and moral deliberations to this prisoner exchange. As Biden administration officials were negotiating, they quickly concluded that nothing would get done unless contract killer and former Russian intelligence officer Vadim Krasikov was part of the deal. Krasikov, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was arrested in 2019 after he murdered a former Chechen separatist fighter in a Berlin park. Russian President Vladimir Putin was intent from the very beginning on getting him released. The German government wanted to keep him behind bars, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz ultimately relented in what can only be described as a massive favor to Biden.
“Nobody took lightly this decision to deport a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment after only a few years in prison,” Scholz commented shortly after.
Costs are high
Like everything else these days, the swap turned into fodder for the partisan brawl that has dominated U.S. politics as long as I’ve been alive. Former President Donald Trump blasted the deal and even raised the question of whether cash exchanged hands. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote that while he was thrilled Gershkovich and company were back home, the Biden administration may have incentivized Russia (and other bad regimes) to take more Americans as hostages.
The critics have a point. There’s no question that U.S. adversaries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have engaged in a pattern of scooping up innocent Americans on frivolous charges, likely for the sole purpose of using them as chips to be cashed. For the Russians, this usually involves getting their own spies back to Moscow. For the Iranians and Venezuelans, it’s typically about forcing sanctions relief from Washington. For the North Koreans, the motive is often a mystery. In all these cases, however, the United States has decided to play the game. Getting our people back is viewed as worth the cost of whatever U.S. officials offer in exchange.
The Biden administration has been especially busy on the prisoner exchange front. In April 2022, the United States was able to get back American Trevor Reed by sending a convicted international drug trafficker, Konstantin Yaroshenko, back to Russia. Five months later, the United States released two nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s wife, both convicted of drug trafficking, for the freedom of seven Americans. In December of the same year, Biden traded Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the “merchant of death,” for WNBA star Brittney Griner. And in September, the United States and Iran arrived at an agreement in which Tehran released five imprisoned Americans for $6 billion of its own frozen assets. (The United States eventually blocked the transfer after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel.)
Deals must be made
Biden, though, isn’t the only president who has had to check his moral qualms at the door. In 2016, President Barack Obama ordered the release of seven Iranians and dropped 14 others from Interpol’s watch list for four Americans, one of whom was Washington Post columnist Jason Rezaian. In 2017, Trump authorized a $2 million payment to North Korea to get American student Otto Warmbier back to the country. (Warmbier later died after being in a coma.)
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Every single one of these deals had their critics at the time, and they usually centered on the same argument: Trading bad guys for good guys short-circuits justice and allows criminals to walk free. Emotionally speaking, it’s difficult to argue with this reasoning. The prisoners the United States let go were contemptuous individuals, either drug dealers, spies, sanctions violators or, in the case of Krasikov, stone-cold murderers. The Ali Khameneis, Putins and Maduros of the world will have their fill, celebrate their victories and likely conclude that jailing Americans on ridiculous charges is a great way to push Washington into concessions.
Yet at the same time, concessions are inevitable. If U.S. officials really want to get their people back, they have no choice but to put something on the table to incentivize the other side to play ball. We can scream, moan and complain about this all we want, but the simple fact is that the United States isn’t going to get these arrangements for free. The politicians and pundits who argue differently either don’t have a clue about how high-stakes negotiations work, are delusional about their own abilities or are more interested in making political hay than getting on with the job.
If anybody has a better idea about how to get Americans home, they should spell it out. But the reality is that outside of white-knuckled diplomacy, there aren’t good alternatives available.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. ©2024 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
