Paul Whelan finally released from Russian custody
An international effort to negotiate a prisoner swap resulted in the release of Paul Whelan along with other prisoners from Russia. This prisoner exchange is seen as the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union. In exchange, the Russians received prisoners that they wanted released and returned to Russia. Joe Biden praised the international effort that made this prisoner exchange possible.
From The Detroit News:
The now-54-year-old Whelan was arrested in a Moscow hotel room on Dec. 28, 2018, on what he and U.S. officials have long decried as bogus espionage charges. Convicted in 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor that he’s serving at a labor camp in remote Mordovia. He has served a third of that sentence.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in March of last year while on a reporting assignment in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for the CIA. He and the newspaper rejected the accusations. He was convicted last month and sentenced to 16 years, the first time since the Cold War that Russia had put a U.S. reporter on trial for espionage.
Whelan was left behind in two previous U.S.-Russian exchanges ? prisoner swaps for basketball star Brittney Griner and Reed in 2022.
Whelan and his family had expressed concern that President Joe Biden’s administration would work out a deal for the reporter Gershkovich, who’s been held just over a year, “and will leave me here a third time,” Whelan told The Detroit News in a Christmas Eve phone interview.
Whelan has toiled in an unheated garment factory at a labor camp in remote Mordovia. In the December interview, he had leveled sharp criticism at Biden, saying the president had failed him by relying on “passive political niceties.”
“I’m told everyone is doing all they can and that my release is a ‘top priority.’ But after five years, that sounds like my New Year’s resolutions ? quickly set aside and soon forgotten,” Whelan told The News in December.
Additional Reading:
Burke, M. N. (2024, August 1). Biden on Russia’s release of Michigan’s Paul Whelan: ‘Welcome almost home’. The Detroit News. Link.
Category: Russia, Veterans in the news
Welcome home young man.
Dude has a BCD.
Should have swapped for someone else.
Fuck him.
Dropped from E-6 to E-4 as well.
The lazy media will not do any research into the background of this “marine”. To them, one size fits all. Having never been in the military, they have no clue to the vast difference among individuals.
I heard a local talk show host refer to him as a “retired Marine.” **eye roll**
That annoys me, too. To reporters, almost all of whom know jack shit about the military, discharged and retired are the same thing.
He’s obviously a bit of a shitbag, but the wife beating Basketball dyke ( that has been home for nearly 2 years, playing in games that no one watches) is worse.
She left her wife the DAY after finding out wifey was preggo with a baster baby. Then, she refused to pay child support.
You can’t make this shit up….
A true American Hero to our current administration.
And if I recall, there was something about a sports car in the divorce…
“Whelan has toiled in an unheated garment factory at a labor camp in remote Mordovia”
Curious as to what kind of garments.
Asking for a friend.
At least he learned a trade while behind bars. He is currently fielding job offers for clothing factories in Bangladesh.
At least he wasn’t enslaved in a sex toy factory in Krakozhia
Meanwhile, this happened at the return:
https://x.com/KateHydeNY/status/1819236332209582339
He was hoping to fly to China for fetal stem cell treatment for his Alzheimer’s disease.
There has been speculation that Brandon went in to use the toilet. But I think he just wanted a look-around, since he knows he will have to downsize from AFOne when he leaves office. Anyway, he was inside the cabin for about two minutes for whatever reason no one knows.
Just wow… On the plus side, he didn’t fall going up or down..
The latest nonsense is how he will not be able to readjust to society after his time in the Russian can.
I am sure All-Points Logistics will hire him.
We get back a dirtbag and Ivan gets back a true war criminal. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
Don’t want to go to a Russian Prison? Then don’t go to Russia and do stupid sh*t.