Years of U.S. negotiations behind the Russia prisoner swap
By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON, July 31 (Reuters) -The landmark prisoner swap agreed by Russia, the United States and several of its allies that brought home journalist Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan and freed 14 others was more than two years in the making, involving secret talks and complex diplomacy involving Germany, Russia and the U.S., which all had divergent interests.
It nearly didn't happen.
This chronology is based on three interviews with senior Biden administration officials and public statements, and includes information from other governments and the Wall Street Journal. The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
EARLY 2022 - 'SPY FOR A SPY'
Talks that led to Thursday's exchange really started more than two years ago, before Gershkovich was detained. Within months of U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner's detention in Russia in February 2022, the Russians were ready to talk, U.S. officials said.
They approached Washington repeatedly with an offer, a U.S. official said: Griner could go, and so too could detained former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was convicted of spying, a charge he and the U.S. deny, as part of a deal for Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov.
"A spy for a spy," is how the deal was framed, a U.S. official recalls, referencing Moscow's charges that Whelan and the U.S. have denied.
The one problem: Krasikov was not the Americans to give. He was serving a life sentence in Germany after murdering an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in a Berlin park in broad daylight. The offer, U.S. officials thought, was not serious.
In December 2022, after months of talks, Griner would be released in a swap with Russia for arms dealer Viktor Bout. Whelan would be left behind.
"I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release," Whelan told CNN at the time.
EARLY 2023 - NAVALNY IN THE MIX?
Early in the year, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his German counterpart, Jens Ploetner, to try to figure out how to make a deal for Whelan happen.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on the sidelines of a meeting in Japan on April 17, 2023.
They would suggest a new twist - what if the Germans release Krasikov, and in return get Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Navalny had been evacuated for emergency treatment to Berlin after his poisoning in Siberia and recovered in the Black Forest; he voluntary returned to Russia in 2021.
The addition of Navalny might help sweeten the deal for Germany, U.S. officials thought. Baerbock initially disliked the idea, saying Navalny would just return to Russia. They decided to go over her head.
GERSHKOVICH ARRESTED
In March 2023, Biden administration officials got an alarming call from the Wall Street Journal: another U.S. citizen was detained in Russia, the newspaper's reporter Evan Gershkovich, who had been accredited by Moscow and covered the country for years.
The issue was escalated to Biden the next day, when he was presented with the case during his daily intelligence briefing.
Biden administration officials opted to press diplomatic rather than intelligence channels first, not wanting to lend credence to the allegation that either Whelan or Gershkovich were spies, U.S. officials said.
Blinken called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on April 2, and told his counterpart they were holding a legitimate journalist. "He is a journalist who works for an internationally and respected news outlet," he said. "Claims that he was spying are outrageous and false. Your government has crossed a line."
Lavrov shot back that Gershkovich had been "caught red-handed" and said "him being a journalist does not provide him immunity," a U.S. official said.
Blinken responded: "You know our country well. You know are system well. We are both adults. You know that for all our efforts to learn information, we do not use journalists."
The fluent Russian-speaking journalist, the son of emigres who left the Soviet Union for the United States during the Cold War, had been detained while on a reporting trip.
Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government have said he did not commit any crime and was wrongfully detained.
Reuters was unable to determine what specifically he was reporting on.
Then in October 2023, Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was detained and ultimately arrested while visiting family in her native Russian region of Tatarstan. Her employer said her imprisonment was unjust and politically motivated.
Washington made another offer to Moscow that did not include Krasikov, a U.S. official said. It was rebuffed.
JANUARY AND FEBRUARY 2024 - BIDEN AND SCHOLZ AGREE
Biden called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Jan 16, inviting him to a meeting in the White House, where the prisoner issue was going to be at the top of the agenda.
Scholz said he would get it done. He told Biden, "For you I will do this," Sullivan told reporters on Thursday.
The U.S. and Germany started talking about a deal before the in-person meeting took place on Feb. 9. They reached an initial agreement for the first time on a deal including Krasikov.
It would be finalized after the two leaders met and sent to Russia, they agreed, the U.S. official said.
The German government said on Thursday that it had to weigh the prison sentence given to Krasikov against "the freedom, physical well-being and - in some cases - ultimately the lives of innocent people imprisoned in Russia and those unjustly politically imprisoned."
FEBRUARY 2024 - NAVALNY DIES
The offer was never sent because, on Feb. 16 Navalny would die in a Arctic penal colony. The United States had lost the part of the deal that appealed to the Germans, U.S. officials worried.
That same day, Sullivan had a meeting scheduled with Gershkovich's parents. He told them he still thought there was a path forward.
The death happened as the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of U.S. and European allies, was underway.
There, Vice President Kamala Harris met on the sidelines of a conference with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob to make sure they would honor their part of a prisoner swap deal.
"A lot of people at the time were wondering why she was meeting with (Golob)," a White House official said. "We had identified that there were two Russians that Slovenia was holding that the Russians wanted. Her job was to persuade him to release them." Harris also met with Scholz.
EARLY 2024 - A NEW APPROACH
The White House national security team had started meeting daily on the issue; Gershkovich's employer and family had kept his detention in the headlines and lawmakers were taking notice. His parents were the guests of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson at March's State of the Union address.
The administration put together new lists of Russian political prisoners to be discussed with Germany, but saw no progress. Biden sent a letter to Scholz at the end of April outlining a complicated potential deal.
In June, Scholz appeared ready to approve Germany's end of the deal - Krasikov would be released, setting off a multi-step prisoner exchange.
Washington expedited its new offer to Moscow, then waited. Hopeful signs started to emerge out of Russia: Gershkovich's and Kurmasheva's trials began, then were expedited.
JULY 2024 - THE DEAL IS ON
Two weeks ago, the Biden administration got formal word that Russia was ready to accept the deal, U.S. officials said.
"In early July, the Russians had agreed in principle (to the swap) and then in late July they accepted it," said a U.S. official. "Then we hit the ground running" and an inter-agency taskforce began working to finalize the complicated arrangements for the swap, the official said.
It was happening even as Biden's own political future was falling apart. He called the Slovenian prime minister from his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to twist arms on a final part of the deal, hours before he released a letter to the public on July 22 saying he would not seek reelection, according to a U.S. official.
Biden's team started work, secretly, on a host of international logistics that had to go like clockwork for the deal to be executed.
This week, Sullivan called the families of the detained Americans with a message: It's time to come to the White House and meet with the president. He had some news about their case.
Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Heather Timmons and Daniel Wallis
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