The following is a script for a story you can watch here.

Thursday night – 11:38 pm –  on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland…

((VO DEPLANING))

three Americans wrongfully imprisoned in Russia touched down on home soil, free and in safe hands, after a 7-country prisoner swap that took two years to negotiate.

Evan Gerskovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva were greeted by President Biden and Vice President Harris, along with their families. Vladimir Kara-Murza -- a U.S. permanent resident who is Russian – returned to Germany…

The largest prisoner swap between the US & Russia since the Cold War…with 24 prisoners total involved. Historic to say the least.

((VO WHELAN DEPLANING))

Paul Whelan, a 54-year old Marine Veteran, had been in Russian custody for more than five years...following his arrest at a Moscow hotel where he was attending a friend's wedding. Whelan was serving a sentence of 16 years in a high-security penal colony...convicted of espionage after accepting a flash drive from a Russian acquaintance.

((VO ALSU DEPLANING))

Journalist Alsu Kurmasheva...a 47-year-old mother of two and a dual U-S - Russian citizen. In June of last year Kurmasheva was working for Radio Free Europe in Prague...when she flew to Russia to visit her elderly mother. She was detained at the airport on her way home and subsequently sentenced to six and a half years in a Russian penal colony...accused of spreading false information about the Russian Army.

((VO EVAN DEPLANING))

And 32-year-old journalist Evan Gershkovich. The son of Russian immigrants who fled the Soviet Union in 19-79, Gershkovich moved to Russia in 2017 to write for The Moscow Times before joining the Wall Street Journal. Nearly a year and a half ago... Gershkovich was arrested interviewing factory workers in eastern Russia.

Last month, he was convicted of espionage in what was widely considered a sham trial...and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

And even after 491 days in captivity, Gershkovich was as dogged a reporter as ever…

 in a form he had to fill out before leaving Russian prison, he asked if Vladimir Putin would sit down for an interview.

His colleagues at the Wall Street Journal made sure his name never left the news cycle. They pressed the government *hard* to find a way to bring Evan home, but they had help from a secret weapon:

((VO MILLMAN THURSDAY))

Evan’s mother Ella Milman. Here she is leaping into Evan’s arms on the tarmac Thursday night.

Ella played an extraordinary role getting her son home…even cornering German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a Manhattan gala last September to ask for help in getting Evan freed.

She cornered Scholz to ask for help… because of the 7 countries involved in this deal… the lynchpin was sat in Berlin: the prisoner Putin wanted…convicted murderer and hitman Vadim Krasikov…serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering a Chechen dissident in a park. German authorities accused Krasikov of committing quote “State-sponsored murder,” sent to Germany with a fake passport and orders to kill straight from the Kremlin.

Releasing Krasikov, a convicted murderer, was politically difficult for Scholz… but he was persuaded.

Evan’s mother Ella Milman insisted to Scholz’s chief of staff in January quote “you have the key.”

And NBC News reports that on February 9th, Scholz told Biden he was onboard.

And Scholz did have the key. Releasing Krasikov unlocked the rest of it: Russia would release 5 German nationals and 7 Russian citizens being held as political prisoners, along with Whelan, Gershkovich, Kurmasheva and Kara-Murza, in exchange for Krasikov and 7 other Russian intelligence operatives and hackers – being held in Slovenia, Poland, Norway and the U.S. 

In his remarks Thursday, President Biden pressed on the importance of international allyship, saying that deals like *this* are what allies are for:

((SOT)) “So for anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do, they matter. Today is a powerful example of why it's vital to have friends in this world, friends you can trust, work with and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this, our alliances make our people safe.”

That’s the power of friendship. Chancellor Scholz reportedly told the President “I’ll do this for you.”

The deal was agreed in principle July 17…

And just an hour before President Biden announced he would not be seeking a second term, isolated with COVID-19 in his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart to secure their side of the deal. A moment of vindication for a president who has always insisted in the importance of the international community.

But Thursday also brought feelings of what could have been: Alexei Navalny, who had been imprisoned in a Russian work colony, was also considered as part of this prisoner swap had he not passed away in February.

((VO KARA-MURZA))

Then there is our friend, the only freed man we have yet to discuss: Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Kara-Murza, now a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for articles he penned from Russian prison, was arrested for giving speeches against Putin’s war in Ukraine. Even before that, Russian authorities had poisoned him TWICE, but he survived. He is now receiving medical care in Germany.

I spoke with Vladimir the day before he was arrested – before he had yet to return to Russia. Even then, he knew what he had to face:

((SOT)) ALI: Are you worried about speaking out against the Russian government and against this war and invasion from Russia?

//

VKM: we all know the price. We all know the cost. But we also know that there are millions of people in Russia, who categorically oppose Putin’s regime and everything it’s doing both in terms of domestic repression and in terms of external aggression. We know that there are many people in Russia who want our country to be a normal, more democratic European state. I think it'd be very demoralizing if those of us who are sort of the public faces of the pro-democracy and the opposition movement would all just leave the country. I do not know condemn anybody. It's certainly a personal decision, but if you're asking about me, I'm a Russian politician. Russia is my country. Russia is my home, and this is where I have to be.

ALI: I'm worried for you, my friend. You have been a source of my information for many, many years, so I'll worry on your behalf.

X

 In the days leading up to his April 2022 arrest in Russia, before his conversation with me, Vladimir Kara-Murza had dinner with another friend of our show and our next guest, Bill Browder, who *begged* him not to return to Russia. He tried to appeal to Vladimir’s sense of duty: he argued if Vladimir was put in prison, the people would be deprived of his anti-Putin message. He told Browder,

“Bill, sometimes symbols are more important.”

But Vladimir Kara-Murza is no longer a symbol. Kara-Murza is, finally, a free man.