This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 1 episode of “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
On Thursday, basketball star Brittney Griner helped lead the U.S. women’s basketball team to victory against Belgium at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The reason that victory was possible — the reason Griner was able to represent the U.S. in these Olympic games — was because of a feat of diplomacy by President Joe Biden.
The reason that victory was possible — the reason Griner was able to represent the U.S. in these Olympic games — was because of a real feat of diplomacy by President Joe Biden.
In February 2022, Griner was detained in Russia on trumped-up charges related to cannabis products found in her luggage. By August, she had been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony.
But just a few months later, in December of that year, Biden announced that he had negotiated a historic prisoner swap — securing Griner’s safe release.
That’s why Brittney Griner was able to play for Team U.S.A. in the Paris Olympics.
But Griner was not the only American prisoner being held in Russia, and the Biden White House sought to use the momentum from her release to continue negotiations for other hostages.
There was Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was arrested on espionage charges in Russia back in 2018, charges that the U.S. and Whelan have both denied.
And Vladimir Kara-Murza, an American green-card holder and longtime free press advocate in Russia. His arrest appeared to be an attempt by Vladimir Putin to silence one of his biggest critics.
Putin would go on to take even more prisoners. People like Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist working for The Wall Street Journal — who was also arrested on trumped-up espionage charges. And Alsu Kurmasheva, another American journalist who was arrested in August 2023 for failing to register as a foreign agent.
For years, families, friends, and employers of these American prisoners have been advocating for their release.
All of them were being held as prisoners of the Russian government …until Thursday.
On Thursday, in another historic series of negotiations, Biden secured the release of all four of those prisoners as part of a remarkably high-stakes, multilateral negotiation.
In total, 24 people were released: 16 held captive by Russia and eight by the U.S. and our European allies. It was the largest prisoner swap with Russia since the Cold War. That on its own is extraordinary — but the details of how this deal came together are really something.
For years, families, friends, and employers of these American prisoners have been advocating for their release.
In particular, the staff of The Wall Street Journal have been pushing relentlessly and publicly for the return of their colleague. The plight of Gershkovich even became an issue in the presidential election as former President Donald Trump boasted that Gershkovich would only be free once he was elected president:
“Vladimir Putin, president of Russia will do that for me,” said Trump, “and I don’t believe he’ll do it for anyone else.”
Trump thought he alone could secure Gershkovich’s release. But many people felt otherwise — including Gershkovich’s own mother. According to The Wall Street Journal, “In April of last year, she had rushed up to President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and grabbed his hands before imploring him: ‘You are the only one who can bring my boy home.’”
She was right. Not only did Biden secure the release of Gershkovich and the other hostages, he did so using a careful and skillful strategy that Trump — and probably a lot of other politicians — simply could never pull off.
For starters, Putin’s price for the release of these hostages, the key bargaining chip, was Vadim Krasikov. In 2019, Krasikov was arrested for assassinating a Chechen dissident in Berlin on behalf of Russia’s intelligence agency.
Krasikov was a Kremlin-linked assassin serving a life sentence in Germany. He is someone so close to Putin that Western intelligence officials reportedly speculate may have even been the Russian president’s own personal bodyguard.
To secure the release of these prisoners, Biden needed to get Germany to agree to release a very high-profile criminal back into Russian custody. That’s not something the German government was eager to do.
But Biden made strengthening American bonds with NATO allies, like Germany, a cornerstone of his foreign policy — a stark reversal from the Trump-era policy of alienating Western democracies in favor of autocrats and dictators.
And so, when the time came for Germany to play its part and release that Russian assassin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly told President Biden, “For you, I will do this.”
President Biden first started working to secure support from our allies in the summer of 2023. By early 2024, it looked like a deal was coming together. But then, the whole thing nearly fell apart.
One of the prisoners who the U.S. and Europe were hoping to get released as part of the deal was Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. But just a week after Biden secured Germany’s support, Navalny mysteriously died in a Russian prison, prompting global outrage.
Biden then dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris to help ensure the arrangement with Germany and other allies would hold. According to NBC News, at a February meeting between Harris and Scholz, the pair discussed the prisoner swap the U.S. was working toward. According to the official, Harris raised something Biden had recently discussed with the chancellor — that Germany’s release of Vadim Krasikov was a critical component of getting a prisoner swap with Russia.
A White House official said, “She moved the ball forward significantly in that meeting.” The official also said Harris’ meeting in Munich with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob was arranged specifically to try to help bring Slovenia on board with the multicountry prisoner swap.
These meetings continued for months. Then, on July 17, the Biden administration got the news that the deal had finally come together.
That date is significant: It was the day Biden was diagnosed with Covid.
Four days later, on Sunday, July 21, at 12:45 p.m., Biden was on the phone with the Prime Minister of Slovenia, hammering out the final details of the deal.
Thursday’s act of delicate diplomacy was possible only because Joe Biden is the president.
That date is also significant: just one hour later, Biden released a statement announcing his exit from the presidential race.
Imagine, for a second, the kind of focus and fortitude it takes to be working on these kinds of high-stakes negotiations — at the same time that you’re making the most difficult decision of your political career … and also recovering from Covid.
Imagine, for a moment, what would have happened if it was Donald Trump in that situation. A man who has made a political career out of maligning America’s geopolitical alliances and who has been criminally charged for his efforts to stay in power.
Thursday’s act of delicate diplomacy was possible only because Joe Biden is the president.
Join Alex Wagner, Rachel Maddow and many others on Saturday, Sept. 7, in Brooklyn, New York, for “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024,” a first-of-its-kind live event. You’ll get to see your favorite hosts in person and hear thought-provoking conversations about what matters most in the final weeks of an unprecedented election cycle. Buy tickets here.
