Russia's President Vladimir Putin (right) welcomes Russian citizens released in a prisoner exchange at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport on Thursday.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist, runs toward her family upon her arrival at the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Thursday, as US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris look on.

MOSCOW/ANKARA/WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.

The White House said it negotiated the exchange with Russia, Germany and three other countries. The deal, worked on in secrecy for more than a year, involved 24 prisoners — 16 moving from Russia to the West and eight sent back to Russia from the West.

Six countries released at least one prisoner and a seventh — Turkiye — participated by hosting the location for the swap, in Ankara.

The complex agreement was described by The New York Times as "the most far-reaching exchange between Russia and the West in decades".

US President Joe Biden hailed the deal as "a feat of diplomacy and friendship" and praised Washington's allies for their "bold and brave decisions".

Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, buoyed by the occasion, greeted freed US citizens, including journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, as they arrived at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.

The deal gives the Biden-Harris administration a marquee diplomatic success with the presidential campaign, pitting Harris against Republican former president Donald Trump, barely three months away.

Experts said Biden will have to fend off Republican criticism of the deal and, in a broader sense, will still have plenty of work to do to polish his foreign policy record for the history books.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier given his own hero's welcome to the freed ones from his country, in a mirror image of the ceremony that would unfold in the US. Putin said they would be given state awards.

They included Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murder in Berlin, the German government said.

The Kremlin on Friday said that Krasikov is an operative with Russia's FSB security service.

The exchange also represents a victory for Putin, who had indicated he wanted Krasikov back. Their homeland "had not forgotten you for a moment", he said.

No ties reset

The multicountry deal appeared to be a one-time exchange that did not reset the antagonistic US-Russia relationship, which has deteriorated sharply since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in 2022.

US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said Washington-Moscow ties remain "in a very difficult place" despite the swap. "There was no trust involved in this relationship or negotiation," Finer told broadcaster CNN.

The Kremlin said in a statement its decision to pardon and free prisoners "was made with the aim of returning Russian citizens detained and imprisoned in foreign countries".

The last major exchange between the US and Russia, in 2010, involved 14 prisoners.

Before then, major swaps involving more than a dozen people had only taken place during the Cold War, with Soviet and Western powers carrying out exchanges in 1985 and 1986.

The two countries had a high-profile exchange in December 2022, swapping US basketball star Brittney Griner — sentenced to nine years for vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage — for arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence.

Among the Westerners freed, Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was accused of collecting sensitive military information for the CIA.

The White House posted a twominute video of the moment the families of the US-bound detainees spoke to their loved ones by phone from the Oval Office.

"This is Momma. Do you hear me? It's your mom," Gershkovich's mother tells her son in the clip, posted on Biden's social media account on the X platform.

Hours later, Gershkovich scooped her up and lifted her in the air as they met on the tarmac while other family members cheered for joy.

Rico Krieger, a German, had been sentenced to death in Belarus on terrorism charges. He was pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko before being freed.