The Russian government is growing “concerned” over “fears” that President Donald Trump will return to the White House after the November election, according to a new report.
A report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Moscow became more interested in negotiating a prisoner swap with the United States when Trump recently surged in the polls after surviving an assassination attempt.
The Journal, whose reporter, Evan Gerskovich, was freed as part of the prisoner swap deal, noted that “Moscow’s concerns about a potential Trump presidency speeded up the deal.”
“The German negotiation team was led by the deputy chief of the foreign secret service BND Philipp Wolff, a former prosecutor who joined the intelligence agency in 2007,” the report states.
“Wolff’s team saw an opening when their Russian counterparts said they wanted to wrap up the deal before the U.S. election in November.
“Some officials deduced that the Russians were either concerned about an unpredictable Donald Trump coming again to the presidency, or they feared that [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz would no longer be willing to help a president who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Germany.”
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, Trump issued a direct warning to Russia and other nations with American hostages.
Trump notably said:
“And to the entire world, I tell you this, we want our hostages back — and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”
Trump has prided himself on freeing Americans held abroad without being forced into lopsided exchanges.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has accepted such deals.
However, experts have warned that Biden’s openness to accepting cushy deals will provide incentives for more hostage-taking in the future.
In 2018, Turkey released American pastor Andrew Brunson.
Brunson was released after Trump threatened to hit the Turkish economy with tough economic sanctions.
The threat alone was enough to send the Turkish government scrambling.
Russia may have preferred to negotiate with the more pliant Biden admin.
Under Biden, the U.S. government had shown its willingness in the past to trade valuable, even dangerous, convicts for Americans held abroad.
In its report, the Journal noted separately that Biden’s prisoner swap still left many Americans behind in Russian prisons.
The Russians apparently got what they wanted, nevertheless.
Russia freed wrongly convicted WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich as part of the deal.
Gershkovich and more than a dozen others jailed by the Kremlin were exchanged for Russians held in the U.S. and Europe, including a convicted murderer.
U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan was also released alongside Gershkovich.
Whelan was arrested in Moscow on December 28, 2018, which he says he visited for a friend’s wedding.
He was imprisoned on charges of espionage that he has consistently and vehemently denied.
Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020.
He has been serving that sentence at a remote prison camp in Mordovia, where he does manual labor at the prison’s clothing factory.
Whelan was designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department in May 2020.
The last time Russia exchanged prisoners with the U.S. was in December 2022, when Moscow freed basketball player Brittney Griner in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia for smuggling and possessing cannabis.
Like in Gershkovich’s case, Griner’s harsh sentence was viewed as Russia effectively taking an American hostage to obtain leverage over the U.S.
Griner’s exchange deal was met with a backlash, however, as the Biden admin chose to free the “woke” sports star and leave Whelen in a Russian gulag.
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