US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan, who landed in the US after their release in a major prisoner swap with Russia, according to DPA. A live broadcast at the White House showed Biden and Harris greeting Gershkovich, Whelan, and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva as they disembarked from a plane at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, BTA reported.

Two planes with released prisoners also landed at Cologne airport, including five German citizens. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who cut short his holiday to meet the prisoners, described the encounter as "very touching." Scholz noted the prisoner swap with Russia and Belarus was a difficult decision, particularly because of the release of Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Chechen exile in Berlin.

In an unprecedented operation involving Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT), a total of 26 prisoners were exchanged at Ankara airport yesterday. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the eight freed Russian citizens at Moscow airport, as reported by DPA and Reuters, citing Russian media. Putin announced that all eight returnees would receive Russian state awards. Among them were Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murder by a German court, and two men convicted of cybercrimes in the US, Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznev. Two of the eight returnees were minors.

The United States specified that seven countries participated in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. The swap involved Russia and several Western countries, with a total of 24 people, most convicted in high-profile cases, returning to their homelands. American prisoners freed by Russia included Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, both sentenced to 16 years for espionage, and Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for spreading false information about the Russian army.

Some prominent political dissidents were also freed from Russia, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, who holds British citizenship, and others like Ilya Yashin, Oleg Orlov, Vadim Ostanin, Ksenia Fadeeva, Lilia Chanysheva, Andrei Pivovarov, Demuri Voronin, Aleksandra Skochilenko, and Kevin Leak. The Kremlin stated that President Vladimir Putin had pardoned 12 of the freed individuals, including the three American citizens, as part of the conditions for the release of the Russians from the West.

German citizen Rico Krieger, sentenced to death for terrorism but pardoned by Belarusian President Lukashenko, was released from Belarus. Russian media confirmed that Vadim Krasikov, a Federal Security Service (FSB) agent convicted for the 2019 Berlin murder of a Chechen dissident, was among those returned to Russia.

Turkish intelligence, which coordinated the exchange in Ankara, stated that 10 people went to Russia, including the two minors, 13 to Germany, and three to the United States. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan clarified that the exchange did not involve financial payments or a softening of sanctions against Moscow. He also mentioned that the plan originally included Alexei Navalny, but unfortunately, it did not come to fruition.