It's Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, the day of the week when I offer quotations intended to be uplifting or elucidating. Today's inspiring words come from the Wall Street Journal's superb story about the release of its reporter, Evan Gershkovich, from a Russian prison.
Gershkovich was of 16 people exchanged by Vladimir Putin's regime Thursday. All 16 had been kidnapped – what other word can you use? – and imprisoned under phony charges in sham trials harking back to the days of the Soviet Union. They are journalists, artists, human rights activists, and prisoners of conscience. In return, the Kremlin received the creepy assortment of imprisoned assassins, hackers, thieves, and spies it wanted back.
Does the swap have the feel of extortion? Yes, somewhat. Does it encourage tyrants and terrorists to seize other innocents abroad? Perhaps. Does our government need to put the squeeze on Hamas to release the people it stole 300 days ago? I certainly think so. But I'd like to defer that conversation to another day. On this morning, let us appreciate the sheer joy felt by the families and friends reunited with their loved ones last night.
The Biden administration has been handling the delicate prisoner swap with prudent discretion, but when the negotiations bore fruit, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris went to Joint Base Andrews Thursday evening to personally greet three freed Americans.
Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine arrested in 2018, was the first to emerge from the airplane. Whelan saluted the commander in chief smartly before descending the stairs onto the tarmac.
Evan Gershkovich was next. He gave his mother a huge hug, lifting her off the ground in his elation. Then came Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor of Radio Free Europe, who was arrested last summer and sentenced to 6 ½ years in a Russian penal colony for … doing journalism. She was immediately enveloped in a group hug by her husband and two daughters.
Whelan told the assembled reporters that he was feeling good. When one of them mentioned that he'd been detained for six years, he replied: "Five years, seven months, five days," adding that every one of those days he sang the national anthem.
As I mentioned above, the Wall Street Journal has already published a riveting and extraordinarily detailed behind-the-scenes account of how the hostage swap took place. It ends with two paragraphs describing how Evan Gershkovich got the last word on Vladimir Putin:
The Russian Federation had a few final items of protocol to tick through with the man who had become its most famous prisoner. One, he would be allowed to leave with the papers he'd penned in detention, the letters he'd scrawled out and the makings of a book he'd labored over. But first, they had another piece of writing they required from him, an official request for presidential clemency. The text, moreover, should be addressed to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
The pro forma printout included a long blank space the prisoner could fill out if desired, or simply, as expected, leave blank. In the formal high Russian he had honed over 16 months imprisonment, the Journal's Russia correspondent filled the page. The last line submitted a proposal of his own: After his release, would Putin be willing to sit down for an interview?
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
