American citizen Paul Whelan spoke with WTOP’s J.J. Green about his fifth anniversary in a Russian prison.
He was interviewed about 8:30 p.m. local time in Mordovia on Thursday. His message was that he is concerned that too much time is passing as the United States tries to free him and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich from Russian prisons.
It’s an election year and Whelan wants President Biden to remain focused on American citizens detained overseas. Whelan has voiced concerns in recent interviews that he does not feel all that can be done to work toward his release is being done by the Biden administration.
Whelan wants to speak directly to the president.
“I’ve put in multiple requests to speak to him,” Whelan said.
He said he’s asked more than a half dozen times.
“He does speak to my family, and he has spoken to my parents, but I’d like to speak to him personally,” Whelan added.
Whelan said if he gets that opportunity, “I will tell him I still don’t feel that everything that can be done is being done. I think there’s a lot more that could be done.”
The death by poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has renewed Whelan’s sense of urgency. Navalny died in February while he served a 19-year prison term on charges of extremism that Navalny condemned as politically motivated.
“If they can get to him, they can get to me. They could poison me to make me seriously ill or they could try to injure me,” Whelan said.
Whelan said harming, but not killing him, could be used as a tactic by Moscow to get what they want.
Whelan thinks he knows who Putin wants in a prisoner swap. That is how hostage releases are done now. The American citizens being detained in prisons overseas on trumped-up charges are pawns used as leverage by the likes of Putin in Russia. Putin was allowed to swap WNBA player Brittney Griner, for example, in exchange for the world’s most notorious arms dealer.
In this case, Whelan pointed to Vadim Krasikov, a 58-year-old convicted assassin in a German prison. He is rumored to be at the top of Putin’s list of Russian citizens he wants to exchange for Whelan and Gershkovich.
“[Krasikov] works for the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) and he was sent out to murder people around the world. He went after an Armenian that the Russians say was a terrorist, in broad daylight in a park, and he was arrested for it,” Whelan said.
Forty-year-old Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, an asylum seeker in Germany, was shot dead by Krasikov in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park. Moscow claimed he was a terrorist. Allegedly, Khangoshvili worked for Georgian Intelligence identifying Russian spies and jihadists.
Krasikov is the same person that was allegedly in line to be to exchanged for Navalny, who died mysteriously in a Siberian prison.
When Whelan was asked why he thinks Putin is going to great lengths to get Krasikov back, he said the Kremlin feels that Krasikov went out to do his job. That job was to take out a terrorist. It was also to inspire confidence in other Russian FSB assassins. The message to them was that if they go out to do their job and get caught, the Russian government will come for them.
Whelan said he remains optimistic he will be released, he just hopes it is sooner rather than later. He doesn’t want officials in Washington, D.C. to forget about him, even in an election year.
There have been rumors of Whelan’s possible release in a prisoner swap for many months. He was rumored to have been included in the release of Griner but that never happened. Secretary of State Antony (Winken) Blinken has confirmed in recent months that the State Department and Russian officials are working on a prisoner swap that may include Whelan and Gershkovich.
Joe Biden’s record on securing the release of American citizens detained overseas isn’t very good. Let’s hope Whelan and the other Americans being detained in Russia are released and home soon. It may take a new president to be elected in November before the worldview of America’s weakness on the world stage is overturned.