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In huge news that will surely come as yet another punch in the dick to Donald Trump, it appears that Joe Dark Brandon Biden is still president, and has negotiated a prisoner swap with Russia for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich AND ex-Marine Paul Whelan AND dissident British-Russian activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
These negotiations have been going for quite a while, and the Independent says Russia may be getting some assassins back as part of the deal. Türkiye was the first to officially confirm the swap, that Gershkovich is part of it, and that the total number of prisoners on the move is 10 to Russia, 13 to Germany, and three to the US. (That’s the biggest prisoner swap between Russia and the West in the past several decades, by the way.) As for countries of origin, prisoners are from the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia, and Belarus, per Türkiye.
So, whole lot of swapping going on!
President Biden has just confirmed the news, by the way:
The Independent reports that suspicions had been aroused, as certain specific planes have been on the move to certain specific places, planes and places that point to “swap”:
It comes after a series of mysterious movements of prominent Western prisoners prompted speculation that Vladimir Putin had agreed to swap them for Russians held in the West.
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for a previous prisoner swap, involving the United States and Russia, had flown from Moscow to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Russia had been holding Gershkovich and Whelan under bullshit charges of espionage. In the case of Gershkovich, it seemed likely Putin was paranoid and pissed that Gershkovich was reporting on the realities of Putin’s childhood-to-cannon-fodder pipeline of career opportunities for young Russian men.
This is terrible news for Donald Trump and MAGA dicksniffles.
Trump has for months been claiming that he would be able to end Russia’s war against Ukraine in five seconds flat. He’s always been light on the details — imagine that! — but any MAGA “peace plan” would likely be a yooge deal that would involve Ukraine, a sovereign nation, being forced to agree to give Vladimir Putin everything he wants, in exchange for Putin not murdering and raping their babies anymore.
Trump has also been swearing of late that if America would just Do Him A Favor, Though and elect him, Putin would release Gershkovich in exchange, as a present.
“Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY,” Trump said.
“Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!”
Putin will do that for him, but no one else. Hmmm.
Trump’s assertions raised questions — was this just more dementia babbling from a Trump sitting on the toilet playing with his phone? Or has he been negotiating against the interests of the United States (again), a private citizen on the line with the Kremlin, going back to the same trough that helped him wrangle/steal his first election?
Oh well, doesn’t matter, because Putin just did that for someone else, and his name is Joe Biden.
As for Whelan, that was always a stranger situation. Back in 2022, when Joe Biden negotiated the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner he had really wanted to get Whelan in that swap too, but it didn’t work, because Biden said Russia was “sadly” treating the Griner situation “differently” from the Whelan situation. (They were holding her on bullshit drug charges, while calling Whelan a spy.)
At the time, it was wildly triggering for MAGA types that Griner was coming home and Whelan wasn’t, though we have our doubts that any of them had ever heard of Whelan before MAGA media told them a Black woman was taking a white man’s seat on the airplane back to America.
But Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle said they wouldn’t stop advocating for Whelan’s release, and so did Joe Biden, who had also gotten former Marine Trevor Reed released from Russia earlier that year.
Guess Joe Biden kept his word, a-fucking-gain.
Trump wanted to let Griner rot in Russia, by the way. He called her “spoiled,” but since he’s a fucking racist we’re sure he wanted to say something else.
As for the timing of this, and the why, the Independent links to an interesting thread from Sam Greene, a professor at the Russia Institute at King’s College London. He notes the dynamic of Putin not wanting to give Biden a win, but says maybe now that he’s bowed out of the presidential race, that’s not so important.
But he says ultimately his guess is that maybe this is Moscow desperately trying to show everybody how reasonable it is, look, they’re making deals, they are just really reasonable guys, now can you all stop giving Ukraine aid? He says this would be a huge risk for Moscow, but he guesses that maybe right now is a do-or-die moment for Putin, especially if Trump continues to self-destruct and loses in November? Here is a slice of his very long thread:
So that’s interesting.
The Independent provides this video of the airport in Ankara where it’s all going down, and where you can see Gershkovich being released when it happens. Below that, President Biden is giving remarks.
[Independent / Reuters]
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