White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan got emotional and choked up during the daily briefing Thursday while describing the effort to bring home American prisoners from Russia in a swap.
‘Today – excuse me – today was a very good day,’ Sullivan told reporters, as he celebrated the moment but also contemplated the work that went into the elaborate exchange and the suffering of the prisoners and their families.
He called it the result of a ‘a monumental level of effort’ by an array of staff, and revealed details of talks that stretched on for months and had 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 start of the administration – Biden said the effort began even before he took office. That meant not only strategy sessions and ‘pull-aside’ meetings with foreign counterparts, but emotionally freighted meetings and updates with desperate and frustrated family members seeking the return of their loved ones.
The historic deal freed 24 including 16 who were detained in Russia, but didn’t get every American out. Sullivan also confirmed that the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny – who suffered in a Russian penal colony above the Arctic circle – had once been part of the talks.
Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisor, grew emotional while recounting the efforts to free Americans held in Russia. The historic swap came together Thursday
‘We had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexey Navalny. Unfortunately, he died. In fact, on the very day that he, died I saw Evan’s parents and I told them that the president was determined to get this done even in light of that tragic news,’ he said, referencing the family of freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
The talks involved numerous countries and Sullivan gave ‘personal thanks’ to the leaders of Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, and Turkey.
‘We’ve completed one of the largest and certainly the most complex exchange in history,’ Sullivan said.
‘I spent a lot of time with families, Evan and Paul [Whelan] and Alsu [Kurmasheva], and most of the time, as you can imagine, those are tough conversations. But not today. Today – excuse me. Today was very good day,’ Sullivan said, regaining his composure.
He couldn’t say who decided to ‘go big’ with the overarching deal, saying it was an ‘organic process involving a lot of people across our government.’
President Biden spoke flanked by family members of the detained Americans, and his aides briefed reporters on how the deal came together
He said Biden ‘really pushed us to think about what configuration would actually work to make this happen.’
‘And so I would say that if you had not had Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, I don’t think this would have happened,’ he said.
He joked about his own emotions when retelling how family members received the news.
‘I saved my tearing up for this podium. I would like to strike that from the record,’ Sullivan quipped, to laughs.
‘So the President invited the family members in at the moment that we received the word from the tarmac in Ankara that the exchange was complete, and he was able to give them a news directly that the exchange was in fact complete.’
He said negotiators weren’t sure themselves it was a done deal until hours before.
A key moment came in February when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Biden he would allow for the release of Russia’s top ask: the release of Vadim Krasikov, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in Berlin.
‘It was two guys actually trying to figure out a solution. That was the nature of all of the conversations, and ultimately, the chancellor was able to say to the president, “Let’s do this,”‘ he said.
Asked if Scholz told Biden: ‘For you, I will do this,’ Sullivan responded: ‘I can confirm that he did say that,’ but declined to provide further details.
Sullivan said aides gained confidence after Biden’s July 21 call with the prime minster of Slovenia to put final arrangements in place (two Russians were being held there).
We steadily gained confidence following the President’s call on that on the 21st of July. But that confidence was always tempered by the reality that this was a fragile deal, a complex deal that could fall apart at any moment from multiple different directions. So we held their breath and crossed our fingers until just a couple hours ago,’ he said.
The president himself held an event flanked by family members of Americans detained in Russia. He even held an awkward ‘Happy Birthday’ sing along for Miriam Butorin, the 13-year old daughter of Alsu Kurmasheva, a freed Russian-American journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Responding to a question from DailyMail.com, the president also defended the release of convicted hit man Vladimir Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of an ethnic Chechen Georgian national in broad daylight in a Berlin park.
Asked how he weighed the decision to release the hit man who was able to get away with murder, Biden responded: ‘I got home innocent people.’
