Russia came to an agreement with the United States and other western nations recently on a prisoner swap that saw some long-detained U.S. citizens finally freed.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that part of the reason the massive agreement happened was that Russian President Vladimir Putin is afraid that GOP nominee Donald Trump could become president after November’s elections, which could complicate any potential deal.
On Saturday, the WSJ reported that “Moscow’s concerns about a potential Trump presidency speeded up the deal.”
According to the Journal, the negotiations team, led by German secret service BND Philipp Wolff, “saw an opening when their Russian counterparts said they wanted to wrap up the deal before the U.S. election in November. Some officials deduced that the Russians were either concerned about an unpredictable Donald Trump coming again to the presidency, or they feared that [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz would no longer be willing to help a president who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Germany.”
Trump called for all of the hostages to be returned when he spoke at last month’s Republican National Convention. He even stressed that “they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”
Then, less than a month after that rousing speech, this hostage deal was agreed to.
One of the biggest claims that Trump has made about his success as president was that, while he was in the White House, he was able to free many Americans from captivity in other countries without having to agree to a lopsided deal. That, he says, doesn’t provide additional incentive for countries to take more American hostages in the future.
Andrew Brunson, a pastor from America, was released from Turkish captivity in 2018 after Trump threatened to levy significant economic sanctions on Turkey if they didn’t.
The Journal report suggests that the Russian government could have preferred to negotiate the hostage deal with the Biden administration so that they could get more of their own citizens back.
After the swap was announced, Trump actually congratulated Putin, saying that he got a better deal for Russia than Biden did for the U.S. At a rally in Atlanta Saturday, Trump said:
“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Did you see the deal we made?”
Trump said that the deal resulted in “some of the greatest killers” in the world being freed from captivity so that the U.S. could get a few prisoners back. As he continued:
“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals. It’s nice to say we got ‘em back, but does that set a bad precedent?”
There were 16 total prisoners freed as part of the deal, including Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Eight Russian citizens who were being held in five different countries were freed as part of the deal.
