A Great Day for Life, Freedom, and Biden Diplomacy
A Great Day for Life, Freedom, and Biden Diplomacy
There are always imperfect tradeoffs in diplomacy. On this prisoner swap, though, Biden and Scholz made the right decision
August 1st was a great day for life, freedom, the Biden administration, and our allies. Three Americans, several Russian freedom fighters, and five German citizens gained a new lease on life after the completion of the most complicated swap in the history of Russia’s relations with the United States and Europe. It was a joyous day!
Let’s focus on life first. When Vladimir Kara-Murza – who I have known for a long time – was arrested, I will be honest, I thought he was going to die in jail. That worry grew when Alexei Navalny was killed in prison, or to be more precise, when Putin killed Navalny. So Wednesday night felt like a miracle when I heard from mutual friends that Kara Murza’s family was invited to meet President Biden at the White House the next day. Because I work for NBC News, I knew something big could happen on Thursday. Our excellent reporters were getting hints. I was told not to silence my phone, and good thing I didn’t, because at 5:30 am, I got a call asking if I could appear on Morning Joe at 6 am. But it was only when I heard that Volodya’s family was headed to the White House that I finally believed that he was not going to die in a Russian prison but live in freedom. And that was true for 15 others released from Russia. Nothing is more precious than the gift of life outside of a prison cell.
In the case of Kara-Murza and 15 others, that gift came at a high price: the release of a cold-blooded killer from a German prison, Vadim Krasikov. This Russian intelligence officer assassinated Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen living in exile, on what could only have been direct orders of Vladimir Putin. The bear hug that Putin gave Krasikov upon his return to Russia this week underscored Putin’s direct involvement in this murder in central Berlin (Germany is our NATO ally). And it was the price over which Kara-Murza and others had no say in. As was clear in their remarks yesterday at their first press conference in Bohn, Kara-Murza and two other Russian democratic leaders, Andrey Pivovarov and Ilya Yashin, very personally feel the burden of that heavy price. None of them asked to be swapped for anyone, let alone a killer. But Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden, and other European leaders involved in this deal made the decision that the lives of these wrongly imprisoned Americans, Russians, and a German were worth this high cost. I think they made the right call.
Second, yesterday was a great day for anyone who believes in freedom. Two of the Americans released, Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, are journalists. I don’t know them personally, but I know Evan’s work well. In fact, I cite his articles in my forthcoming book several times. Before his arrest, he was one of the best American journalists working in Russia. I can't prove it, but I think his incredible reporting was the main reason for his arrest: first, to stop him from telling the world about what was happening in Russia and, second, to deter other journalists from doing the same. Evan and Alsu are now back in the business of writing about the truth. That’s a big win for freedom.
In addition, several Russian democratic leaders and human rights activists are also now back in the fight, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, Andrey Pivovarov, Oleg Orlov, Ksenia Fadeeva, Lilia Chanyshev, and Vadim Ostanin (as well as artist Alexandra Skochilenko). On Thursday, on the day of the swap, Kara-Murza elected not to board the plane to Washington and instead went to Germany. Many speculated that perhaps he was too ill to make the long intercontinental flight. Putin, after all, had already poisoned him two times. But he was not on the flight to the United States because he wanted to join his fellow freedom fighters in Germany. And as already mentioned, three of them – Kara-Murza, Pivovarov, and Yashin – already gave their first press conference today in Bonn. I watched the whole thing. Their spirits have not been weakened by jail time. Just the opposite. They were full of fight today. Russia’s democratic movement just got a whole lot stronger by having these three and the others back in action.
Third and finally, yesterday was a victory for the Biden administration’s diplomacy. I am deliberately using the word “administration” because it was truly a team effort involving senior leadership at the State Department, the White House, and the CIA. It was a very complex deal spanning six countries and the swapping of 24 people from prison cells scattered across Europe, the United States, and Russia. This exchange was not a typical Cold War-era deal when spies were swapped for spies. Even the last major swap between the United States and Russia in 2010, in which I played a background role while working at the National Security Council, was an exchange of spies and alleged spies, all of whom, by the way, were Russian. The deal this week included journalists, an assassin, human rights activists, spies, political opposition leaders, cybercriminals, and a doctor. Biden and his team could only get it done because of their strong relationships with close allies. In releasing the Russian killer working for Putin’s intelligence services, Scholtz and the German government, in particular, had to make the hardest decision. I'm sure there were heated debates about the wisdom of such a move, as there were in our government during the spy swap in 2010. Chancellor Scholtz did so because he valued his country’s alliance with the United States. Other allies worked on this deal with us for the same reasons. Allies matter.
But Scholtz also made this decision because he values his personal relationship with Biden, which forged and deepened because of Biden’s style of diplomacy. A different president might not have been able to pull that off. And when the full history of this remarkable feat of diplomacy is told, I am sure we will learn the same about the contribution made by Vice President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, NSF Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director Bill Burns. I know many of these people personally, and they all have a strong commitment to personal diplomacy as a means of advancing American national interests. Burns, in particular, has a long, successful history of practicing quiet diplomacy. His memoir is called Back Channel!
And though we don’t know the details yet, I am guessing that Vice President Harris played a more energized role after the initial swap proposal involving Krasikov and Russian political leader Alexei Navalny and others fell apart following Navalny’s murder on February 16, 2024. Harris was at the Munich Security Conference at the time. I was too. I had just met with Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei’s wife, the night before his murder. On that tragic day, Yulia gave a very moving speech that captivated a shocked and saddened audience, including Harris. The Vice President then went to work – meeting with Chancellor Scholz and the prime minister of Slovenia – to try to resurrect a deal that just died together with Navalny. The final deal this week included four Navalny associates. On the day of the deal, Harris called Navalnaya.
After the day of joy on Thursday, I’ve been thinking about those who didn’t make it out. Navalny obviously was not part of this swap he initially helped stimulate. (Read here what I wrote about his murder from my Munich hotel room). I’ve also been thinking about around 1289 political prisoners still behind bars in Russia. And I was especially disappointed that Marc Fogel, an American teacher in Moscow who I knew while working as the U.S. Ambassador, was not on that plane out of Moscow. (Read what I wrote about him here). While we celebrate the freedom of Americans, Germans, and Russians, I’ve also been thinking about Ukrainians still not living in freedom because of Putin’s barbaric invasion of their country. No Ukrainians unjustly kidnapped and imprisoned by Putin were released in this swap.
But in our long and hard pursuit of justice, we must celebrate victories. This week, we should celebrate the victories of life, freedom, and successful diplomacy of Biden and his administration.
I'll post below some of my clips from my multiple appearances on MSNBC, which started at 6 a.m. (my time) and ended at 10 p.m., just after the Americans landed home.
There is much to justly praise in the hostage deal. I have also seen a lot of criticism from those who oppose the Biden administration. Almost none of the criticisms, however, are intellectually defensible or more than a way of rationalizing why Biden could succeed in freeing Americans from the Putin regime while Trump couldn't.
There is one concern expressed by some of the more well-informed critics, however, that does merit attention. These critics have pointed out that trading hostages for criminals and murderers only incentivizes the Putin regime to conduct more hostage-taking, and that the Biden administration's willingness to do this condemns us to an endless cycle of hostage taking by the Putin regime.
This sounds logical, but it misunderstands the current situation. The reality is that we are already in such an endless cycle, whether we like it or not.
During the Cold War, the KGB did take hostages to trade for spies. It took Barghoorn to trade for Ivanov in 1963, Crawford to trade for Chernyayev and Enger in 1978, and Daniloff to trade for Zakharov in 1986. Undoubtedly, the KGB of that era saw Western enemies everywhere and, if left to its own devices, would have arrested more people just on general principles. But its worst tendencies were restrained by the political leadership.
Today, the situation has changed radically. The current political leadership of Russia is composed of former members of the Leningrad KGB and members of Putin's immediate clan. There are no restraining forces, and as a result the Putin regime has given in to its worst impulses.
The regime is not just collecting potential trade bait, it is collecting people who, according to its paranoid and delusional view, are in some way a threat. That means that even if we stop trading criminals and murderers for hostages, the regime will continue to arrest random Americans regardless of whether a trade is in the offing or not.
We will have to find other ways to make them pay for their misbehavior, and there are asymmetrical strategies that can be used. In the meantime, any American who ventures into Russia despite USG warnings is risking summary arrest and imprisonment. At this point, only accredited US diplomats have some guarantee of safety.
Thank you for this column and the clarity it brings to this very complicated litany of issues with the Putin regime in relishing a world view of its administration as oppressive, tyrannical and NOT free. In turning over how things have played out, just in this one political exchange, I dearly invite the spirits, the souls of B. Nemtsov and A. Navalny, and many, many others treated the same way to remain in the forefront, in the eyes of everyone.
There is a point to negotiating for the return of innocents exchanged for criminals in this matter. It is what free people sometimes have to do given that for Putin there appear only to be ends, and the means to ends are quickly forgotten. We are very happy Gershkovich, Whalen, the dissenters and politicals are home. The U.S. administration is once again an extremely effective civil and human rights establishment dealing with impossibilities, and deserves great recognition. While as a free nation, and this is quixotic, there are no goodbyes to this sort of thing, and now the stakes are higher, it might make sense to follow up to suggest setting everything back, back to the beginning twenty five years ago.