President Biden cast the release of several detained Americans in a multicountry prisoner swap as a vindication of his effort to cultivate international alliances, rebuking his predecessor\u2019s isolationist impulses while celebrating a long-sought foreign policy achievement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy \u2014 and friendship,\u201d Biden said Thursday as he announced that three American citizens and one green-card holder had been released from Russian prisons. \u201cFor anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do. They matter. And today is a powerful example of why it\u2019s vital to have friends in this world \u2014 friends you can trust, work with and depend upon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The line was a thinly veiled jab at Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has often criticized allies while pushing an \u201cAmerica first\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n
Asked directly what he would say to Trump, who has previously attacked Biden over Americans held abroad, the president responded with a question of his own.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he do it when he was president?\u201d Biden said. About an hour later, Trump blasted the deal, saying it set a \u201cbad precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moment reflected how an intricate, seven-country prisoner exchange \u2014 coming just 96 days before Election Day and with less than six months before Biden leaves office \u2014 was quickly thrust into the nation\u2019s fraught political landscape.<\/p>\n
Members of Biden\u2019s team credited Vice President Harris for helping facilitate the deal, aiming to burnish her foreign policy credentials in her presidential campaign against Trump. Lawmakers offered praise for the diplomatic push that led to the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan. Republicans were largely muted, though some questioned the wisdom of releasing Russian criminals for unjustly detained Americans.<\/p>\n
Trump took to his social media site to suggest that U.S. negotiators had gotten the short end of the bargain, without expressing any gladness that the captives returned home safely.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I\u2019m sure the answer is NO)?\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social about the deal with Russia. \u201cAre we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs?\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump falsely claimed he freed hostages with \u201cnever any cash.\u201d In 2017, Trump authorized a $2 million payment to North Korea to bring home American college student Otto Warmbier, two people familiar with the incident told The Post. It\u2019s unclear whether the money was ever paid. Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student imprisoned in North Korea after being accused of pulling down a propaganda poster, was comatose when he left the country and died shortly after arriving in the United States.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters at the White House, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that no money was exchanged in Thursday\u2019s exchange.<\/p>\n
He also praised the president for building the international relationships that helped facilitate the agreement, saying it \u201chonestly could only be achieved by a leader like Joe Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n
For an 81-year-old president who was nudged out of his reelection bid by members of his own party concerned about his ability to carry out his duties in a second term, the swap amounted to the first major foreign policy achievement during a period in which he is aiming to bolster his legacy before leaving office.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal, Russia agreed to release 16 prisoners: four Americans, five Germans and seven Russians, including pro-democracy dissidents. A convicted Russian assassin was released from Germany, and several Russian intelligence operatives held in the United States and Europe were also set free in the largest international prisoner exchange since the Cold War.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an important part of Biden\u2019s legacy building phase in the lame duck period, the kind of success that has become part of the history books,\u201d said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. \u201cAnd what\u2019s good for Biden is good for Vice President Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n
The release of detained Americans undercuts one of Trump\u2019s frequent lines of attack against Biden\u2019s handling of foreign affairs. Trump has argued that only he would be able to free U.S. citizens imprisoned abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire world, I tell you this: We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price,\u201d Trump said in his presidential nominee acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July.<\/p>\n
For the first year of Gershkovich\u2019s detention, Trump remained conspicuously silent on it, part of a long-standing pattern of avoiding criticizing Putin. As reporters increasingly asked Trump about Gershkovich, he began claiming he would secure the reporter\u2019s release after being elected before taking office. Trump did not explain how he would accomplish that but vaguely referenced a special personal dynamic with Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cVladimir Putin, president of Russia, will do that for me, and I don\u2019t believe he\u2019ll do it for anyone else,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
As for Whelan, who was first arrested in Russia during Trump\u2019s term, Trump claimed in 2022 that he turned out down a deal as president to free the former Marine in exchange for a Russian arms dealer nicknamed \u201cthe Merchant of Death.\u201d The United States released the arms dealer, Viktor Bout, in 2022 in exchange for basketball star Brittney Griner. Trump called that deal \u201ccrazy and bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Whelan\u2019s family criticized the Trump administration\u2019s early response to Paul Whelan\u2019s imprisonment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly on, we were discouraged from speaking out about Paul\u2019s case,\u201d they wrote. \u201c\u2026 Those first years were hard when the Trump Administration ignored Paul\u2019s wrongful detention, and it was media attention that helped to finally create critical mass and awareness within the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family also praised Trump\u2019s ambassador to Russia, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, for advocating on Whelan\u2019s behalf in 2019.<\/p>\n
Harris plans to join Biden to welcome Whelan and the other released Americans at Joint Base Andrews on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Harris was in Houston to attend the funeral of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) when the deal was announced but celebrated it on social media, writing on X that she would continue working \u201cuntil every American who is wrongfully detained or held hostage is brought home.\u201d She echoed those comments in brief remarks to reporters before returning to Washington.<\/p>\n
Biden administration officials touted Harris\u2019s role in the negotiations as pivotal. She helped advance the talks during a high-level meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference in February, Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a participant in, very much a core member of, the team that helped make this happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Harris used the opportunity at the security conference to discuss the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a former Chechen rebel commander in Berlin, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the leaders\u2019 private conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became clear to us early on that to secure the release of the Americans, a critical part would be the release of Krasikov, so the vice president spoke directly to Scholz about the need to get this done,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
Harris on Thursday spoke with Yulia Navalnaya, who welcomed the release of three allies of her late husband Alexei Navalny, the political opposition leader who died suddenly in a remote Arctic prison in February.<\/p>\n
Biden and Harris have used high-profile appearances to champion the cause of unjustly detained Americans in the past. Biden mentioned Gershkovich and Whalen during his State of the Union address in March and his speech at the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner in April. Speaking to reporters last week, Harris mentioned the names of several Americans who were taken captive to Gaza by Hamas terrorists in October.<\/p>\n
John Hudson contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Biden cast the release of several detained Americans in a multicountry prisoner swap as a vindication of his effort to cultivate international alliances, rebuking his predecessor\u2019s isolationist impulses while celebrating a long-sought foreign policy achievement. \u201cThe deal that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy \u2014 and friendship,\u201d Biden said Thursday as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}