Trump says Putin “got a great deal,” accuses Biden of setting “a bad precedent” by agreeing to a prisoner swap with Russia.
“I want to congratulate Vladimir Putin on another great deal. We’ve made terrible deals. It’s great to have our citizens back, but it sets a bad precedent,” former US President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia on August 3.
Trump did not mention any of the Americans who were released by Russia in the largest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War. In his previous criticism of the deal, he did not mention any of the prisoners, focusing instead on criticizing the Biden administration.
He did not identify the US officials involved in negotiating the deal with Russia, but implied that the Biden administration had agreed to pay for the prisoners. “We had 59 hostages, and I never paid a dime to release them,” he said, criticizing US officials for “releasing the world’s most dangerous killers.”
In fact, Trump approved a $2 million deal to free Otto Warmbier in 2017, under the guise of medical expenses. Warmbier died shortly after being brought back to the US, and Trump said the bill was never paid.
Trump recently said that if elected in November, he would help free WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023 and sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He said President Putin would do it “for me and no one else.”
However, President Biden has spent the past few months trying to negotiate with Russia to push for a prisoner swap. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said no money was paid in the swap deal with Russia and no sanctions were eased for Moscow.
The Kremlin and the White House have not commented on Mr Trump’s remarks.
This is the second time former President Trump has attacked the prisoner swap deal between the US and Russia in the past week. He has repeatedly attacked President Biden for not being able to negotiate the return of US citizens, claiming that he could “without giving anything away” if elected.
According to the multinational prisoner swap agreement that took place on August 1 at the airport tarmac in the Turkish capital Ankara, 10 Russians, including two minors, were exchanged for 16 Westerners and Russians detained in Russia and Belarus. The deal was the result of months of secret negotiations.
The group of Westerners released included citizens of the US, Slovenia, Norway, Germany, and Poland. Journalist Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan were among those released. Another American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, was also released in this round.
This is the first exchange between Russia and the West since US basketball star Brittney Griner returned home in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022. It is also the largest exchange since 2010, when 14 people accused of espionage were freed.
Previously, major exchanges of more than a dozen prisoners only took place during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the West conducted exchanges in 1985 and 1986.
This prisoner exchange is considered a significant diplomatic achievement for the Biden administration and a victory for President Putin, but it does not contribute to improving the current tense relationship between the US and Russia.