{"id":159475,"date":"2024-08-02T10:05:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T14:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=159475"},"modified":"2024-08-01T16:23:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T20:23:19","slug":"paul-whelan-finally-released-from-russian-custody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=159475","title":{"rendered":"Paul Whelan finally released from Russian custody"},"content":{"rendered":"

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An international effort to negotiate a prisoner swap resulted in the release of Paul Whelan along with other prisoners from Russia. This prisoner exchange is seen as the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the Russians received prisoners that they wanted released and returned to Russia. Joe Biden praised the international effort that made this prisoner exchange possible.<\/p>\n

From The Detroit News:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The now-54-year-old Whelan was arrested in a Moscow hotel room on Dec. 28, 2018, on what he and U.S. officials have long decried as bogus espionage charges. Convicted in 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor that he’s serving at a labor camp in remote Mordovia. He has served a third of that sentence.<\/p>\n

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in March of last year while on a reporting assignment in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for the CIA. He and the newspaper rejected the accusations. He was convicted last month and sentenced to 16 years, the first time since the Cold War that Russia had put a U.S. reporter on trial for espionage.<\/p>\n

Whelan was left behind in two previous U.S.-Russian exchanges ? prisoner swaps for basketball star Brittney Griner and Reed in 2022.<\/p>\n

Whelan and his family had expressed concern that President Joe Biden’s administration would work out a deal for the reporter Gershkovich, who’s been held just over a year, “and will leave me here a third time,” Whelan told The Detroit News in a Christmas Eve phone interview.<\/p>\n

Whelan has toiled in an unheated garment factory at a labor camp in remote Mordovia. In the December interview, he had leveled sharp criticism at Biden, saying the president had failed him by relying on “passive political niceties.”<\/p>\n

“I’m told everyone is doing all they can and that my release is a ‘top priority.’ But after five years, that sounds like my New Year’s resolutions ? quickly set aside and soon forgotten,” Whelan told The News in December.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additional Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Burke, M. N. (2024, August 1). Biden on Russia’s release of Michigan’s Paul Whelan: ‘Welcome almost home’. The Detroit News<\/em>. Link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An international effort to negotiate a prisoner swap resulted in the release of Paul Whelan along … Paul Whelan finally released from Russian custody<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[384,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}