{"id":2318005,"date":"2024-08-02T05:14:57","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T09:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-prisoner-swap-with-russia-was-ridiculously-lopsided\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T05:19:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T09:19:54","slug":"bidens-prisoner-swap-with-russia-was-ridiculously-lopsided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-prisoner-swap-with-russia-was-ridiculously-lopsided\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden&#8217;s Prisoner Swap With Russia Was Ridiculously Lopsided"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbidens-prisoner-swap-with-russia-was-ridiculously-lopsided%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2318005&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Biden administration&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pompeo-blasts-griner-prisoner-swap-bad-guys-for-celebrities-sends-wrong-message\/\" title=\"Pompeo Blasts Griner Prisoner Swap: \u2018Bad Guys For Celebrities\u2019 Sends Wrong Message\">recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/10-babylon-bee-headlines-that-no-longer-sound-like-satire\/\" title=\"10 Babylon Bee Headlines That No Longer Sound Like Satire\">prisoner swap<\/a><\/a> \u2064with Russia\u200c is being characterized by the media as a &#8220;historic&#8221; event, larger in\u200d scale than \u200csimilar exchanges since the Cold War. The swap led to the release of three Americans: journalist Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan,\u2064 and journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, in exchange for eight\u200d Russians. However, the swap is criticized for being heavily skewed, as it\u200c included the release of dangerous\u200d individuals\u2014including a Russian assassin, Vadim Krasikov, and \u2062various spies\u2014who \u200bhave committed serious crimes in the West.<\/p>\n<p>The exchange draws parallels to\u2063 the controversial \u20622014 Bowe Bergdahl swap during the Obama administration, which also faced significant backlash \u200bfor \u2064trading multiple high-value Taliban prisoners for a single U.S. soldier. While\u200d the Biden exchange is not deemed as extreme as \u2064the Bergdahl situation, it highlights concerns about hostile regimes using unjustly detained Americans \u2063as \u200dbargaining chips for their own criminals. Critics argue that \u200dthis\u2062 reinforces the notion \u2063that such regimes can exploit the \u2063situation at will, raising questions about\u200c the efficacy \u200cand \u2063morality of the exchange.\u200b this\u200c action is not viewed as the strategic success that the Biden administration claims it to be.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Biden administration&rsquo;s prisoner swap with Russia is being touted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ex-mlb-commissioner-slams-commissioner-rob-manfred-made-a-serious-mistake-by-pulling-out-of-georgia\/\" title=\"Ex-MLB Commissioner Slams Commissioner Rob Manfred: \u2018Made A Serious Mistake\u2019 By Pulling Out Of Georgia\">corporate press<\/a> as &ldquo;historic,&rdquo; and in a way it is. Nothing like this, on this scale, has happened since the Cold War. But the swap is as lopsided as it is historic.<\/p>\n<p>All Americans should welcome the release of our three unjustly imprisoned compatriots: Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. They were among the 16 western prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for eight Russian nationals released by the U.S. and allies.<\/p>\n<p>But this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/saturdays-fun-fraud-facts-seven-unexplainable-results-that-reveal-democrats-didnt-even-try-to-hide-their-fraud\/\" title=\"Saturday&#039;s Fun Fraud Facts: Seven Unexplainable Results that Reveal Democrats Didn&#039;t Even Try to Hide Their Fraud\">wasn&#038;rsquo<\/a>;t a Cold War-era prisoner swap of the kind immortalized in the Oscar-winning 2015 film &ldquo;Bridge of Spies.&rdquo; It was a dangerously uneven exchange that saw the release of a Russian assassin along with Russian spies and hackers, all of whom have committed serious crimes in western countries. Essentially, Moscow arrested a bunch of innocent western journalists and political dissidents, and then used them as bargaining chips to secure the release of its own killers, criminals, and spies.<\/p>\n<p>Among the Russians released from western prisons, for example, was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who in 2019&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/12\/15\/world\/europe\/germany-russia-berlin-murder.html\">killed a Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight<\/a>&nbsp;in a park in central Berlin. Krasikov, who shot his victim twice with a Glock 26 and then threw it in a river, was sentenced to life in prison in 2021. At the time, German officials said he was a member of the F.S.B., Russia&rsquo;s domestic spy agency.<\/p>\n<p>Also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/world\/evan-gershkovich-prisoner-exchange-paul-wheelan-putin-russians-freed-rcna164678\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">released<\/a> was suspected F.S.B. agent Vadim Konoshchenok, arrested in 2022 on espionage charges in Estonia and extradited to the U.S. He was accused of conspiring to obtain military-grade technologies from U.S. companies and pass them to Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>The prisoner swap recalls the 2014 Bowe Bergdahl affair under the Obama administration. Bergdahl was a U.S. Army soldier who, disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan, abandoned his post in 2009 and was subsequently captured by the Taliban and held as a hostage. In 2014, the Taliban agreed to free him in exchange for five top Taliban officials being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/five-guantanamo-detainees-to-be-exchanged-for-bergdahl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">including<\/a> army chief of staff and deputy minister of intelligence. One of them, Abdul Haq Wasiq, is currently the head of intelligence for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the internationally unrecognized name of the Taliban regime.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Obama was widely criticized for giving up so many high-value Taliban prisoners for Bergdahl and for negotiating with terrorists for his release. Bergdahl&rsquo;s fellow soldiers&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/03\/us\/us-soldier-srgt-bowe-bergdahl-of-idaho-pow-vanished-angered-his-unit.html?hp&amp;_r=1\">accused him of desertion<\/a>&nbsp;and endangering the lives of other members of his platoon who were tasked with finding him in enemy territory. He was later formally charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, to which he pled guilty and was subsequently dishonorably discharged.<\/p>\n<p>Biden&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/iranian-state-television-claims-biden-admin-agreed-to-unfreeze-7-billion-for-prisoner-swap-biden-admin-claims-its-not-true\/\" title=\"Iranian State Television Claims Biden Admin Agreed To Unfreeze  Billion For Prisoner Swap. Biden Admin Claims It\u2019s Not True.\">prisoner exchange<\/a> with Russia isn&rsquo;t as egregiously lopsided as the Bergdahl swap, but it nevertheless sends a clear message that a hostile regime can arrest and detain American citizens on false pretenses, using them as leverage to secure the release of their own people.<\/p>\n<p>At the very least, it most assuredly&nbsp;<em>wasn&rsquo;t<\/em>&nbsp;was the brilliant foreign policy maneuver the Biden administration and the media are saying it was. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CBSNews\/status\/1819071958555808001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">got choked up<\/a>&nbsp;announcing the prisoner swap on Thursday. He praised his colleagues at the NSC, CIA, and State Department that orchestrated the deal, adding that every American should be proud having such people &ldquo;standing up on their behalf and on behalf of American security.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Again, it&rsquo;s good news that three American citizens were released, but it&rsquo;s hard to make the case that the Biden administration stood up for &ldquo;American security&rdquo; or made America safer by agreeing to this deal.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s certainly not something an ailing Joe Biden should brag about, as he did&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AndrewJBates46\/status\/1819050463213330484\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">at a press conference Thursday announcing the swap<\/a>. Asked about former President Donald Trump&rsquo;s comments that he could have secured the American prisoners&rsquo; release without giving up anything, Biden replied, &ldquo;Then why didn&rsquo;t he do it when he was president?&rdquo; and then walked away, seemingly unaware that two of the three Americans released were arrested during his term in office, not Trump&rsquo;s.<\/p>\n<p>A grinning Dana Bash of CNN called it a &ldquo;mic drop moment&rdquo; without clarifying the facts or the timeline of the arrests &mdash; something we might once have associated with Russian state media but are now accustomed to seeing here in the U.S.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pagan-America-Decline-Christianity-Dark\/dp\/1684514444\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Pagan+America&amp;qid=1695306441&amp;sr=8-1\"><i>Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come<\/i><\/a>. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Biden administration&#8217;s recent prisoner exchange with Russia is being hailed by mainstream media as &#8220;historic,&#8221; and in some respects, it is. Such a large-scale swap hasn&#8217;t occurred since the Cold War. However, this exchange is significantly unbalanced. <\/p>\n<p>All Americans should celebrate the release of three unjustly detained individuals: Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter; Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine; and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist. They were part of 16 Western prisoners freed by Moscow in return for eight Russians released by the U.S. and its allies.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, this was not akin to the Cold War-era exchanges depicted in films like &#8220;Bridge of Spies.&#8221; Instead, it was an uneven trade that included the release of a Russian assassin along with spies and hackers who have committed serious offenses against Western nations. Essentially, Moscow apprehended innocent Western journalists and political dissidents to use them as leverage for freeing its own criminals.<\/p>\n<p>Among those released from Western prisons was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who murdered a Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight in Berlin back in 2019. He received a life sentence in 2021 after German officials identified him as an F.S.B., or domestic spy agency member.<\/p>\n<p>Another individual freed was Vadim Konoshchenok, suspected to be an F.S.B agent arrested on espionage charges in Estonia before being extradited to the U.S., where he faced accusations of attempting to acquire military-grade technology from American companies for Russia.<\/p>\n<p>This situation echoes the 2014 Bowe Bergdahl incident during Obama&#8217;s presidency when Bergdahl was exchanged for five high-ranking Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay after he deserted his post during his deployment in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>While Biden\u2019s swap with Russia may not be as drastically unbalanced as Bergdahl&#8217;s case, it nonetheless conveys that hostile regimes can detain American citizens under false pretenses and use them as bargaining chips for their own operatives&#8217; release.<\/p>\n<p>At best, this deal does not reflect the brilliant foreign policy achievement that both Biden&#8217;s administration and media claim it to be. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan expressed emotional pride over orchestrating this deal on behalf of American security; however, while it&#8217;s positive news that three Americans were freed, it&#8217;s difficult to argue that their release enhances national security or safety.<\/p>\n<p>Biden should refrain from boasting about this development\u2014especially given his comments at Thursday\u2019s press conference regarding former President Trump\u2019s assertion that he could have secured these prisoners\u2019 freedom without concessions\u2014since two out of three detainees were arrested during Biden&#8217;s presidency rather than Trump&#8217;s tenure.<\/p>\n<p>CNN&#8217;s Dana Bash referred to Biden\u2019s response as a \u201cmic drop moment\u201d without addressing key facts or timelines related to these arrests\u2014a practice more commonly associated with state-controlled media but increasingly seen within U.S. reporting today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":2318006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Biden.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[3620,4551,32402,36886,4280],"class_list":["post-2318005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-biden","tag-foreign-policy","tag-international-relations","tag-prisoner-swap","tag-russia"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Biden.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2318006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}