White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said Thursday that “nobody’s delighted” over one of the figures released in a recent prisoner swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.
“Look, nobody’s delighted, or doing backflips over here because Mr. [Vadim] Krasikov is now a free man,” Kirby told Fox News anchor Bret Baier on “Special Report.” “That’s what negotiations are all about.”
Krasikov, one of multiple Russians released in the Thursday swap, had been imprisoned in Germany after being convicted of a 2019 murder, per The Associated Press.
“The president was willing to make that tough call in order to get these … all these individuals, not just the Americans, all of them, released. And it took some tough calls by our allies and partners, including Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz in Germany, who actually had to let Mr. Krasikov go.”
Gershkovich and Whelan were freed alongside Alsu Kurmasheva, Vladimir Kara-Murza, five Germans and seven Russians.
“Today, we celebrate the return of Paul, Evan, Alsu, and Vladimir and rejoice with their families,” President Biden said in a statement. “We remember all those still wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world. And reaffirm our pledge to their families: We see you. We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring your loved ones home where they belong.”
In a Thursday letter, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said that her paper is “grateful to President Biden and his administration for working with persistence and determination to bring Evan home rather than see him shipped off to a Russian work camp for a crime he didn’t commit. “