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[Text/Observer Network Xiong Chaoran] On August 1, local time, four American citizens were released from Russia and returned home. US President Biden welcomed their return and said this was one of the largest and most complex prisoner exchange operations in US history.

According to the U.S. Politico News Network, Biden said in a speech in the White House banquet hall that evening: "Now their cruel ordeal is over and they are free. This is an incredible relief." The families of the released prisoners stood on both sides of Biden.

The freed Americans include Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was recently sentenced to 16 years in prison after being held in Russia for more than a year on espionage charges, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested on espionage charges in 2018.

Reuters previously disclosed that this "prisoner swap" involved not only the United States and Russia, but also CNN and other US media outlets, saying that it involved seven countries and 24 prisoners, while Russia Today (RT) said that it involved 26 prisoners, including two underage children of a couple. Biden also thanked several allies for participating in and helping in what the US described as "the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War."

The report believes that this is a decisive moment for Biden to achieve major diplomatic achievements and diplomatic legacy less than six months before leaving office. With less than 100 days to go before the voting day of the US presidential election, the "prisoner swap" has also affected the campaign.

On August 1, local time, US President Biden delivered a speech at the White House on the US-Russia "prisoner swap". Associated Press

CNN said that the prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia is just one of the many foreign policy dilemmas that have plagued President Biden's term, in addition to the two "hot potatoes" of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When Biden finally decided to withdraw from the election last month and announced his support for Vice President Harris's candidacy, he promised to continue working to resolve all these issues during the remaining six months of his term. This "prisoner exchange" is Biden's first major foreign policy action after he made this statement.

Politico reported that during most of Biden's term, talks between the United States and Russia were intermittent, and Biden did not succeed in getting these Americans released. Now, Biden has revealed that several allies eventually participated in these "prisoner swap agreements."

"The agreement that made this possible was a feat of diplomacy and friendship," Biden said, bluntly slamming former U.S. President Donald Trump and other isolationist Republicans. "For anyone who questions whether allies are important, they are."

The 24 (or 26) prisoners swapped were held in five countries, with Germany credited with making the "pivotal decision" to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian who had been serving a prison sentence in Germany for murder.

In a speech on August 1, Biden praised the US allies who helped reach the agreement, and he acknowledged that Germany had made "significant concessions" and made necessary efforts to release four Americans and 12 Germans held by Russia. US President's National Security Advisor Sullivan told reporters that Biden would also personally thank the leaders of Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey that day.

Wall Street Journal reporter in Moscow, Gershkovich, accused of "trying to obtain military secrets" Reuters

Biden acknowledged that the United States paid some "price" as part of the "prisoner swap agreement," including the release of seven Russians in addition to Krasikov. In addition, while he expressed hope that the agreement would improve relations between the United States and Russia, he gave little indication that U.S.-Russia relations might improve.

"I don't need to talk to Putin." Asked if he would now be willing to speak directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden added that his administration would continue to advise people not to go to certain countries to avoid the need for more "prisoner swaps."

It is worth mentioning that in May this year, former US President Trump said that he would use his relationship with Russian President Putin to release American citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Gorshkovich from a Russian prison.

"Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter detained by Russia, will be released immediately after the (November 5 U.S. presidential) election, but certainly before I take office. He will be home safe and with his family. Russian President Vladimir Putin will do this for me, but not for anyone else, and it will cost us nothing!" Trump wrote on social media at the time.

CNN believes that the "prisoner swap" has injected new impetus into Biden (although he has withdrawn from the election) and Harris' presidential campaign. A White House official also told CNN that Harris played an important role in the diplomatic efforts to get Germany involved in the "prisoner swap." When attending the Munich Security Conference in February this year, Harris asked staff to leave the room after meeting with German Chancellor Scholz. She allegedly pressured Scholz in a subsequent private conversation and emphasized that the release of Krasikov was crucial to the "prisoner swap agreement" and that he was the "biggest fish" Russia wanted.

Biden boasted: "My administration has brought home more than 70 Americans who were wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, many of whom were held before I took office."

Trump had previously claimed that he would secure the release of prisoners "without giving up anything." When asked later about this statement, Biden asked in return: "Why didn't he do that when he was president?"

On August 1, 2024, local time, in Ankara, Turkey, the Turkish National Intelligence Agency organized a prisoner exchange operation.

According to reports from Reuters, RIA Novosti, RT and other media on July 31 local time, there were already a lot of signs that a large-scale prisoner exchange between Russia and Europe and the United States was taking place at the time. This included flight tracking applications discovering the appearance of planes used to exchange prisoners between Russia and the United States in 2022, and some detainees from both the United States and Russia were told to be suddenly transferred or suddenly disappeared from the prison database system.

However, such prisoner exchanges are usually kept confidential. The Kremlin and the Russian Embassy in the United States refused to disclose information about the "prisoner exchange", and Western countries did not comment.

According to reports, before this, the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War took place in 2010, involving a total of 14 people. The last time the United States and Russia exchanged prisoners was in December 2022, when Russia exchanged American women's basketball player Brittney Griner, who was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling in Russia, for Russian businessman Viktor Bout.

According to RT, the United States and Russia exchanged a total of 26 prisoners held in several countries. This is the largest prisoner exchange of this kind in modern history. The "prisoner exchange" took place in Turkey on the afternoon of August 1st local time.

Among them, Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich and Russian intelligence officer Krasikov are the two most prominent names on the "prisoner exchange list". Ten people were released in Russia, while another 16 returned to the West, including 12 to Germany and 4 to the United States.

It is reported that this "prisoner exchange" operation involves much more people than the last prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia, and is also comparable to the number of prisoners involved in a "prisoner exchange" in 1985.

In 1985, during the Cold War, a large-scale spy exchange took place, when 25 American spies accused of operating in East Germany and Poland were released, and the United States released four people in return, including the famous Polish spy Marian Zacharski and three Soviet spies. This was also one of the largest spy exchanges during the Cold War.

Westerners released from Russia

1. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was found guilty of espionage in early July and sentenced to 16 years in prison. The 32-year-old was “caught red-handed” in Yekaterinburg in March last year while collecting classified information from Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s main tank and armored vehicle manufacturer.

2. Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow in December 2018. In 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The 54-year-old citizen of the United States, Britain, Ireland and Canada recently urged Washington to "fill Guantánamo Bay with Russian officials and arrest Russian spies" to ensure his release.

3. German citizen Rico Krieger, a Westerner sentenced to death in Belarus, was pardoned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 30, local time. In early July, a Minsk court found the 29-year-old guilty of six criminal charges, including "mercenary activities" and "terrorist acts," for detonating explosives on a railway line on behalf of Ukrainian intelligence agencies.

4. Vladimir Kara-Murza holds dual Russian and British citizenship. In 2023, he was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security prison for treason and other charges. Kara-Murza has accused Russian troops of war crimes in Ukraine and served as vice chairman of a Washington-based, US-funded foundation dedicated to promoting "regime change" in Moscow. He was a disciple of the late Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and a close associate of exiled former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

5. Former Moscow city councilor Ilya Yashin was designated a foreign agent and sentenced to 8.5 years in prison in 2022 for spreading false information about the Russian military.

6. Kevin Leak is the youngest person ever convicted of treason in Russia. The 19-year-old German-Russian dual citizen was sentenced to four years in prison last December. On July 30, local time, his mother told the media that the food she sent could not be delivered to the prison where her son was held because the prison "no longer had this prisoner."

7. Ksenia Fadeyeva, a former employee of the nonprofit organization of the late Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny.

8. Lilia Chanysheva, a former employee of the nonprofit organization of the late Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny.

9. Vadim Ostanin, former head of a branch of Navalny's foundation, was arrested in December 2021 and charged with running an extremist organization. In July last year, he was sentenced to nine years in prison.

10. Aleksandra Skochilenko, an artist from St. Petersburg, was convicted in November 2023 for spreading false information about the Russian military. She worked with a feminist group to replace supermarket price tags with messages accusing Russia of being a "fascist state" and saying "Russia is bombing Ukrainian civilians."

11. Oleg Orlov, 70, is the head of a human rights NGO. In 2022, he wrote an article condemning the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and accusing Russia of falling into "fascism." In February this year, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

12. Andrey Pivovarov, who led the now-banned Open Russia movement until he was detained in May 2021. In July 2022, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

On August 1, 2024, local time, in Ankara, Turkey, the Turkish National Intelligence Agency organized a prisoner exchange operation.

13. Alsu Kurmasheva, arrested in Kazan in October 2023 and charged with being an unregistered foreign agent, charges that were later expanded to include “spreading false information about the Russian military.”

14. Moyzhes, a dual Russian-German citizen who ran a company that provided services to Russians seeking to immigrate to Germany, was arrested in May and charged with treason.

15. Dieter 'Demuri' Voronin, arrested in 2021, is suspected of obtaining confidential information about Russian troops in Syria from Ivan Safronov, an employee of the Russian Space Corporation (Roscosmos), on behalf of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). He holds dual German and Russian citizenship and uses a Georgian name on his Russian passport.

16. Patrick Schoebel, a 38-year-old German citizen, was detained in St. Petersburg in February after edible cannabis snacks were found in his luggage. He was charged with drug trafficking.

Russians released from the West

1. Vadim Krasikov, considered a spy for the Russian Federal Security Service, has been held in Germany since 2020. Last year, a Berlin court sentenced Krasikov to life imprisonment for killing a Chechen separatist with Georgian nationality in a Berlin park in 2019. German magazine Der Spiegel, the US government-funded website Bellingcat and Russian opposition media The Insider allegedly provided some evidence against Krasikov.

2. Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultsev, arrested in Slovenia in 2022, were accused of being "sleeper agents" and pretending to be an Argentine couple who ran a gallery and an IT company in Ljubljana to cover up their intelligence activities across the EU. Their two underage children were also exchanged in the operation.

3. Maxim Marchenko pleaded guilty in February to federal money laundering and smuggling charges for allegedly shipping “U.S.-made military-grade microelectronics to end users in Russia, illegally providing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of controlled technology.” On July 17, he was sentenced to three years in prison.

4. Vadim Konoshchenko, arrested by U.S. authorities in July 2023. The 48-year-old Estonian resident was accused of "having ties to the Russian Federal Security Service" and smuggling "hundreds of thousands of illegal ammunition" to "Moscow's war machine," in violation of U.S. and EU embargoes against Russia.

5. Vladislav Klyushin, arrested in Switzerland in March 2021 and extradited to the United States in December of that year. A Boston court sentenced the 42-year-old businessman to nine years in prison in July 2023 for "securities fraud, wire fraud, unauthorized access to computers, and conspiracy to commit crimes." He was allegedly involved in "an elaborate hacking trading scheme that netted approximately $93 million through securities trading using confidential corporate information stolen from U.S. computer networks."

6. Roman Seleznev, a hacker who was sentenced to a long prison term in the United States for multiple computer crime charges.

7. Mikhail Mikushin, arrested in 2022 on suspicion of spying for Russia. The 46-year-old academic teaches at the University of Tromsø in Norway and uses a Brazilian passport.

8. Pavel Rubtsov, also known as Pablo Gonzalez, was arrested in Poland on February 28, 2022 on suspicion of espionage. The dual Russian-Spanish citizen has been working as a freelancer for several Spanish media outlets since 2014, often reporting on the conflict in the Donbass region.

This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.