The Whelan family’s nightmare ends

The Whelan family nightmare has finally come to a close with former Marine Paul Whelan’s return to the United States after he spent more than five grueling years in a Russian prison.

Whelan went to Moscow a couple of days before Christmas in 2018 for a former fellow Marine’s wedding when he was arrested on allegations he was a spy. He was arrested on Dec. 28, 2018, and was in a Russian prison from that moment until Thursday, when the U.S., Germany, Norway, Slovenia, Belarus, and Russia agreed to the largest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

“Five years, seven months, and five days,” Whelan told reporters when he got off the plane in Texas, while his brother, David Whelan, noted in a written statement that Paul Whelan “was held hostage for 2,043 days.”

Paul Whelan’s arrest more than five and a half years ago turned an ordinary family’s world upside down.

“Paul is not a spy. And his family members are not lobbyists, publicists, negotiators, or specialists
of any kind when it comes to international hostage scenarios,” David Whelan said in a lengthy statement Thursday. “While we did our best, as amateurs with limited resources, we do not believe Paul would be free today without the expert help we received behind the scenes. The family of a hostage is isolated, and it can be hard to know who can help and who to trust.”

When Paul Whelan was arrested, former President Donald Trump was in office, Mike Pompeo was the Secretary of State, and President Joe Biden hadn’t even declared his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election.

Paul Whelan was sentenced to serve 16 years in prison in June 2020.

Fast forward to the next administration, and Biden agreed to two prisoner exchanges with Russia in 2022. Trevor Reed was returned in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was jailed in the U.S. on drug smuggling charges in April 2022, and then WNBA player Brittney Griner was exchanged for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in Dec. 2022.

Paul Whelan was not included in either deal, and while his family was grateful that Reed and Griner returned home, they were devastated at the thought of the U.S. giving up Yaroshenko and Bout without getting their family member and wondered what could be left for the U.S. to entice Russia into giving him up.

The Biden administration said at the time that Moscow viewed Paul Whelan as a higher-valued individual than either Reed or Griner, given his, albeit disputed, espionage conviction.

David Whelan praised the deal to bring Griner home on the day the exchange occurred but called it a “catastrophe” for his brother.

“How do you continue to survive, day after day, when you know that your government has failed twice to free you from a foreign prison? I can’t imagine he retains any hope that a government will negotiate his freedom at this point,” David Whelan wrote. “It’s clear that the US government has no concessions that the Russian government will take for Paul Whelan. And so Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes.”

David Whelan’s read on the situation proved correct. As negotiations continued over multiple years, U.S. officials finally came to the conclusion that the U.S. didn’t have a Russian asset that could entice them to give up Paul Whelan, but the Germans did.

Moscow made it clear they wanted Germany to give up Vadim Krasikov, an FSB hitman, who was arrested and convicted in Germany for committing the murder of a former Chechen militant in a Berlin park. The Germans were very apprehensive about giving up Krasikov, who German judges said was acting on the orders of Russian authorities when he carried out the murder of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili in broad daylight on Aug. 23, 2019.

Russia also arrested Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, in March 2023 on the same espionage charges they did with Whelan. Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison last month. A month after Gershkovich’s arrest, Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russia-U.K. citizen with a U.S. green card, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of treason and other offenses relating to his criticism of the war. Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian duel citizen reporter with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested in October 2023 and was convicted last month of “spreading false information” about the military and sentenced to 6 and a half years in prison.

Their arrests, primarily Gershkovich, further put pressure on the U.S. State Department to come up with a deal to get them all home.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. and Russia were engaged in negotiations as the U.S. sought to convince Germany to give up Krasikov. During that time, however, the Whelan family was left wondering what the administration was doing to secure Paul Whelan’s release.

Paul and David Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth Whelan, repeatedly traveled to Washington, D.C., for meetings with relevant U.S. officials. Elizabeth Whelan traveled to D.C. in mid-July amid concerns that they had “de-prioritized” Paul Whelan’s case, she told the Washington Examiner at the time, though she walked away from those meetings optimistic.

Her meetings “totally assuaged,” her concerns, she said. “So it kind of, from a news point of view, it’s a bit of a nothing burger. From a personal point of view, it meant the world to me.”

“There’s a lot of news about Evan Gershkovich, and we don’t begrudge him any of it. Just as we didn’t with Brittany. I mean, some people are going to have more celebrity status than others. Paul does not have any celebrity status, so he’s going to be mentioned less often,” she said. “But it can be difficult for a family sitting back. My parents are in rural Michigan, and I’m in Massachusetts, and looking at that attention, I wonder if that reflects an actual change of priority by the US government.”

It took several months of negotiations, including between the Western allies, but the U.S., Russia, Germany, Belarus, Norway, and Slovenia carried out the massive prisoner exchange this week. Eight Russians arrested in the U.S., Slovenia, Germany, and Norway were given back to Russia in exchange for the release of Paul Whelan, Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, and Kara-Murza, five Germans (one from Belarus), and seven Russian political dissidents.

Elizabeth Whelan was in the Oval Office with Biden and the families of Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, and Kara-Murza when they spoke on the phone with their loved ones once they were in U.S. custody.

“It didn’t feel real until we were flying over England. I’m a British citizen, Irish citizen, Canadian, and American. So, as we came over England, and I looked down, that’s when it became real,” Paul Whelan said in Texas after departing the plane that brought the released prisoners there.

“Getting off the plane and seeing the president and vice president, that was nice. It was a good homecoming. So looking forward to seeing my family down here and just recuperating from five years, seven months, and five days of just absolute nonsense by the Russian government,” he said.