Members of the United States Senate had mixed initial reactions to President Joe Biden saying on Thursday that he is “serious” about seeking a prisoner swap that would bring detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich home from Russia.
Biden said at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, that he was “serious about a prisoner exchange” for Gershkovich before acknowledging how “that process is underway.” The comments come just over a week after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russian and U.S. officials had been in discussions about a swap.
BRAUN INTRODUCES BILL TO REVERSE ‘HARMFUL’ BIDEN MORTGAGE RULE
Gerskovich, whom U.S. officials insist is innocent, is being held in a high-security prison in Russia on spying charges. Russian authorities detained him on espionage charges on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg in late March. His arrest marked the first detention of an American reporter in Russia on spying allegations since the Cold War, further straining already tense relations between Moscow and Washington.
The developments follow the high-profile deal for WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December and the return of former Marine Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who was serving 20 years for conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the U.S., last April.
Paul Whelan, the former U.S. Marine who Russia has held since 2018 on espionage charges he and the U.S. say are bogus, was not involved in the Reed or Griner swap agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused prior swap offers for Whelan, whose family says was set up by the Russian Federal Security Service in order to be hit with fabricated spying charges.
Senators across the ideological spectrum told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that such deals could be problematic, though their reactions were splintered with regard to the best way to proceed.
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kennedy (R-LA), and John Barrasso (R-WY) all said executing another swap to get Gershkovich home would encourage Putin to steal more Americans.
“My concern with all this is you’re just incentivizing hostage taking,” Graham, a noted Russia hawk, said of continued prisoner swap agreements. “I want the person out of jail. I think it’s an outrage against international law and decency, but if you start doing these prisoner swaps, the Iranians are going to take more, the Russians will take more. I’d be very reluctant to do that.”
“The president has been inviting these kinds of captures because of the trade he made where he gave up a high-value target arms dealer for a basketball player,” Barrasso, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in reference to the Griner-Bout swap. “The President’s activities going to continue to encourage Russia to take more prisoners. I want to get Evan home.”
Kennedy said that from his point of view, “More sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem. What you allow is what will continue. And this is going to continue until President Biden says, ‘I’ve had enough.'”
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, had a different take, saying that the risk of Americans being wrongfully detained for political purposes is “always an issue” when dealing with Putin.
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who also serves on the Foreign Affairs panel, expressed concern that Whelan’s case was collecting dust as Gershkovich’s rapidly developing legal situation received prime-time coverage from concerned media colleagues.
“I am curious about why Mr. Gershkovich is the subject of negotiations to the exclusion of, for example, Mr. Whelan, who’s been detained for four years,” Young said.
The Indiana Republican noted that Whelan “rarely goes mentioned” in media coverage, saying he was “highly sympathetic to [Gershkovich’s] situation and the need to get him out there. So I’m grateful to all who are concerned and those who are working on it in the administration, but I don’t want to be inattentive to the others who are also detained.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), another Foreign Relations member, defended Biden’s approach to dealing with rogue foreign actors while freeing wrongfully detained Americans.
“Objectively speaking, President Biden has revitalized NATO and helped Ukraine to defend itself in ways that nobody really anticipated were possible,” Shatz said. “The challenge in foreign policy always is to maintain some sort of dialogue, even your toughest and most brutal enemies, and that’s what he’s doing here because bringing Americans home is a higher priority.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R- SD) offered a similar take, noting that while the U.S. doesn’t “want to encourage” Putin by engaging in such deals, there’s no way of “changing” the Russian leader and the known “ways that he operates.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“He’s doing that now,” Rounds, who serves on the Armed Services panel, said of Putin to abduct more Americans through the Russian legal system. “So when that is occurring — and it is occurring now — then the State Department has to be able to respond appropriately in each of those cases, but you also want to resolve the current situation.”
“Most certainly, we would like to see this man come home, and whatever the appropriate way is, we’re going to support our country in getting him back one way or another.”
