Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva have arrived back in the United States after being freed as part of the biggest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War.
The White House said the US had negotiated the swap with Russia, Germany and three other countries. The deal, negotiated in secrecy for more than a year, involved 26 people, including 16 moving from Russia to the West and eight prisoners, along with two children, in the other direction.
The US citizens’ plane landed late on Thursday at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, where they were greeted by cheers from family and friends who had gathered for their arrival, as well as US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Whelan told Al Jazeera as he left the plane that he was “ecstatic” to have been freed after “five years, seven months and five days”.
The former US Marine, who holds US, British, Irish and Canadian citizenship, said his Irish background was what made him “tenacious” and that every day he sang the national anthem of his four countries to keep his spirits up.
He thanked the negotiators who worked for his release over the years and cheered on American prisoners who are still being held in Russian jails. “Just hang in there, we’re coming for you,” he said.
Biden earlier said he owed a particular debt of gratitude to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who made the politically difficult choice to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence for the murder of an exiled dissident in Berlin.
“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” Biden said at the White House earlier, flanked by the relatives of the freed prisoners.
Harris welcomed their release after what she said was an “appalling perversion of justice”.
The White House earlier posted an emotional two-minute video of the moment the families of the US-bound detainees spoke to their loved ones by phone from the Oval Office.
“This is Momma. Do you hear me? It’s your mom,” Gershkovich’s mother tells her son in the clip, posted on Biden’s social media account on the X platform.
Hours later, Gershkovich scooped her up and lifted her in the air as they met on the tarmac while other family members cheered for joy.
The West secured the release of 16 people who had been jailed in Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian political prisoners in a deal that Turkey helped mediate.
Thursday’s deal was the biggest in post-Soviet history and required significant concessions from other countries.
A previous prisoner exchange between Washington and Moscow took place in December 2022, when American basketball player Brittney Griner returned to the US after 10 months in a Russian prison in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin was at Moscow airport to meet the eight citizens returning home, greeting Krasikov with a handshake as he got off the plane.
Outside Russia, they had been convicted of spying, hacking and murder, but Putin said the group would be honoured with state awards.
US Republican officials have criticised the prisoner swap. Former President Donald Trump, who said he did not have details of the swap, asked whether “murderers, killers, or thugs” were released.
“Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps,” he said on social media.
Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed concern “that continuing to trade innocent Americans for actual Russian criminals held in the US and elsewhere sends a dangerous message to Putin that only encourages further hostage-taking by his regime”.
