SAN ANTONIO — The three U.S. citizens freed from Russian imprisonment as part of a historic prisoner swap last week can now begin their recovery at home after they were medically evaluated at San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center.
Former Marine Paul Whelan and journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva were released from the hospital where they were given medical treatment, following in the footsteps of other high-profiled Americans released by Russia.
The help doesn't stop here. The former prisoners can seek further assistance from the nonprofit government program Hostage U.S., which has helped more than 160 people held in hostage or wrongful detention situations get back to their lives upon returning stateside.
Last week's 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.
Paul Whelan, a corporate security consultant and former U.S. Marine, had been in Russian custody since 2018 after being convicted of espionage charges. The U.S. government considered those charges baseless.
Gershkovich is a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested on March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. He had appeared more than a dozen times in Russian courtrooms since his detention. His family said in a statement that they “can’t wait give him the biggest hug and see his sweet and brave face up close.”
Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian national, was arrested in 2023 in her hometown of Kazan, where she was visiting her ailing mother. The Prague-based editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service was accused of not self-reporting as a “foreign agent” and was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military—charges rejected by her family and employer.
Kurmasheva, 47, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.