The Unit­ed States and Rus­sia com­plet­ed their biggest pris­on­er swap in post-So­vi­et his­to­ry on Thurs­day, with Moscow re­leas­ing jour­nal­ist Evan Ger­shkovich and fel­low Amer­i­can Paul Whe­lan in a multi­na­tion­al deal that set some two dozen peo­ple free, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials in Turkey, where the ex­change took place.

The trade fol­lowed years of se­cre­tive back-chan­nel ne­go­ti­a­tions de­spite re­la­tions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Moscow be­ing at their low­est point since the Cold War af­ter Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s Feb­ru­ary 2022 in­va­sion of Ukraine.

The sprawl­ing deal, the lat­est in a se­ries of pris­on­er swaps ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween Rus­sia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to re­quire sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sions from oth­er coun­tries. But the re­lease of Amer­i­cans has come at a price: Rus­sia has se­cured the free­dom of its own na­tion­als con­vict­ed of se­ri­ous crimes in the West by trad­ing them for jour­nal­ists, dis­si­dents and oth­er West­ern­ers con­vict­ed and sen­tenced in a high­ly politi­cized le­gal sys­tem on charges the U.S. con­sid­ers bo­gus.

In a state­ment post­ed on­line, Ra­dio Free Eu­rope/Ra­dio Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent and CEO Stephen Ca­pus ac­knowl­edged me­dia re­ports that a jour­nal­ist work­ing for the broad­cast­er, Al­su Kur­ma­she­va, would be re­leased as part of the deal.

Ca­pus said the broad­cast­er wel­comed ’’news of Al­su’s im­mi­nent re­lease and are grate­ful to the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and all who worked tire­less­ly to end her un­just treat­ment by Rus­sia.” Kur­ma­she­va, a dual U.S.-Russ­ian cit­i­zen, was con­vict­ed in Ju­ly of spread­ing false in­for­ma­tion about the Russ­ian mil­i­tary, ac­cu­sa­tions her fam­i­ly and em­ploy­er have re­ject­ed.

The deal would be the lat­est ex­change in the last two years be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Moscow, in­clud­ing a De­cem­ber 2022 trade that brought WN­BA star Brit­tney Griner back to the U.S. in ex­change for no­to­ri­ous arms traf­fick­er Vik­tor Bout and a swap ear­li­er that year of Ma­rine vet­er­an Trevor Reed for Kon­stan­tin Yaroshenko, a Russ­ian pi­lot con­vict­ed in a drug traf­fick­ing con­spir­a­cy.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden placed se­cur­ing the re­lease of Amer­i­cans held wrong­ful­ly over­seas at the top of his for­eign pol­i­cy agen­da for the six months be­fore he leaves of­fice. In his Oval Of­fice ad­dress to the Amer­i­can peo­ple dis­cussing his re­cent de­ci­sion to drop his bid for a sec­ond term, the De­mo­c­rat said, “We’re al­so work­ing around the clock to bring home Amer­i­cans be­ing un­just­ly de­tained all around the world.”

Rus­sia has long been in­ter­est­ed in get­ting back Vadim Krasikov, who was con­vict­ed in Ger­many in 2021 of killing a for­mer Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years ear­li­er, ap­par­ent­ly on the or­ders of Moscow’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.

Spec­u­la­tion had mount­ed for weeks that a swap was near be­cause of a con­flu­ence of un­usu­al de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing a start­ing­ly quick tri­al and con­vic­tion for Ger­shkovich that Wash­ing­ton re­gard­ed as a sham. He was sen­tenced to 16 years in a max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty prison.

Al­so in re­cent days, sev­er­al oth­er fig­ures im­pris­oned in Rus­sia for speak­ing out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russ­ian op­po­si­tion leader Alex­ei Naval­ny were moved from prison to un­known lo­ca­tions.

Ger­shkovich was ar­rest­ed March 29, 2023, while on a re­port­ing trip to the Ur­al Moun­tains city of Yeka­ter­in­burg. Au­thor­i­ties claimed, with­out of­fer­ing any ev­i­dence, that he was gath­er­ing se­cret in­for­ma­tion for the U.S. The son of So­vi­et emi­gres who set­tled in New Jer­sey, he moved to the coun­try in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times news­pa­per be­fore be­ing hired by the Jour­nal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hear­ings over the ex­ten­sion of his pre­tri­al de­ten­tion or ap­peals for his re­lease. He was tak­en to the cour­t­house in hand­cuffs and ap­peared in the de­fen­dants’ cage, of­ten smil­ing for the many cam­eras.

U.S. of­fi­cials last year made an of­fer to swap Ger­shkovich that was re­ject­ed by Rus­sia, and Biden’s De­mo­c­ra­t­ic ad­min­is­tra­tion had not made pub­lic any pos­si­ble deals since then.

Ger­shkovich was des­ig­nat­ed as wrong­ful­ly de­tained, as was Whe­lan, who was de­tained in De­cem­ber 2018 af­ter trav­el­ling to Rus­sia for a wed­ding. Whe­lan was con­vict­ed of es­pi­onage charges, which he and the U.S. have al­so said were false and trumped up, and he is serv­ing a 16-year prison sen­tence.

Whe­lan had been ex­clud­ed from pri­or high-pro­file deals in­volv­ing Rus­sia, in­clud­ing those in­volv­ing Reed and Griner.

Litvi­no­va re­port­ed from Tallinn, Es­to­nia, and Lee from Mon­go­lia. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Zeke Miller in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) —