US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan when they landed in the US after their release as part of a major prisoner swap with Russia, DPA reported , quoted by BTA.
A live broadcast from the White House showed Biden and Harris greeting Gershkovich, Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsou Kurmasheva as they disembarked from the plane, which landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington shortly after 11:30 p.m. Thursday (03 :30 on Friday GMT).
Russia, Belarus and several Western countries exchanged a total of 26 prisoners at Ankara airport yesterday in an unprecedented operation involving Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT).
In exchange for the release of political prisoners and critics of the Kremlin, Germany, the US and partner countries released serving sentences from Russia suspected of espionage, as well as a man serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a Chechen exile in Berlin.