White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan grew emotional and emotional during Thursday’s daily press briefing as he described the effort to bring prisoners from Russia back to the United States in an exchange.
“Today, excuse me, today was a very good day,” Sullivan told reporters, celebrating the moment but also contemplating the work behind the elaborate exchange and the suffering of the prisoners and their families.
He called it the result of “a monumental level of effort” by a range of staff, and revealed details of conversations that stretched for months and led to President Biden making a key phone call even on the day he decided to end his bid to retain the White House.
Sullivan and his team have been involved in the effort since the beginning of the administration; Biden said the effort began even before he took office. That meant not only strategy sessions and “sideline” meetings with foreign counterparts, but also emotionally charged meetings and updates with desperate and frustrated family members seeking the return of their loved ones.
The landmark deal freed 24 people, including 16 who were being held in Russia, but not all of the Americans. Sullivan also confirmed that the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who suffered in a Russian penal colony on the other side of the Arctic Circle, had taken part in the negotiations.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan grew emotional as he recounted efforts to free Americans detained in Russia. The historic exchange took place Thursday
“We had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexey Navalny. Sadly, he died. In fact, the same day he died I saw Evan’s parents and told them that the president was determined to get this done even in light of that tragic news,” she said, referring to the family of freed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich.
The talks involved numerous countries and Sullivan offered “personal thanks” to the leaders of Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey.
“We have completed one of the largest and certainly most complex exchanges in history,” Sullivan said.
“I spent a lot of time with my families, Evan and Paul (Whelan) and Alsu (Kurmasheva), and most of the time, as you can imagine, those are difficult conversations. But not today. Today… excuse me. Today was a very good day,” Sullivan said, regaining her composure.
He could not say who decided to “go big” with the sweeping agreement, saying it was an “organic process involving a lot of people across our government.”
President Biden spoke alongside family members of the detained Americans, and his advisers briefed reporters on how the deal was finalized.
He said Biden “really pushed us to think about what setup would actually work to make this happen.”
“I would say that if Joe Biden had not been sitting in the Oval Office, I don’t think this would have happened,” he said.
He joked about his own emotions as he recounted how his family members received the news.
“I saved my tears for this podium. I’d like to erase that from my history,” Sullivan joked with a laugh.
‘Thus, the President invited the family members at the time when we received the news from the track in Ankara that the exchange had been completed, and he was able to give them the news directly that, in fact, the exchange had been completed.’
He said negotiators were not sure a deal was a done deal until hours earlier.
A key moment came in February, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Biden he would allow the release of Russia’s top demand: the release of Vadim Krasikov, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Berlin.
‘It was actually two guys trying to find a solution. That was the nature of all the conversations and ultimately the chancellor was able to say to the president: “Let’s do it,” he said.
Asked if Scholz told Biden, “For you, I will do this,” Sullivan said, “I can confirm he said that,” but declined to provide further details.
Sullivan said advisers gained confidence after Biden’s July 21 call with Slovenia’s prime minister to hammer out final arrangements (two Russians were being held there).
“We were slowly gaining confidence after the President’s call on this on July 21. But that confidence was always tempered by the reality that this was a fragile agreement, a complex agreement that could fall apart at any moment from multiple different directions. So we were holding our breath and crossing our fingers until just a couple of hours ago,” he said.
The president himself held an event attended by relatives of Americans detained in Russia. He even sang a bizarre “Happy Birthday” alongside Miriam Butorin, the 13-year-old daughter of Alsu Kurmasheva, a freed Russian-American journalist from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
In response to a question from DailyMail.com, the president also defended the release of convicted hitman Vladimir Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of an ethnic Chechen Georgian citizen in broad daylight in a Berlin park.
Asked how he weighed the decision to release the hitman who got away with murder, Biden said: “I brought innocent people home.”