Russia has seized yet another American journalist, knowing that the Biden administration ransoms hostages and thus encourages hostage-taking. Reuters reports:
Russia has detained an editor at U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for failing to register as a foreign agent while visiting for a family emergency….Since the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich in March on spying charges, almost all U.S. journalists have left Russia and Washington has repeatedly urged other Americans to leave.
Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service and holds U.S. and Russian passports, entered Russia on May 20. As she awaited her return flight on June 2, she was detained and her passports were confiscated. She was subsequently fined for failing to declare her U.S. passport….
The U.N. Human Rights Office called for Kurmasheva’s “prompt and unconditional” release, adding: “Journalists must be left to do their vital work free from pressure, intimidation and reprisals.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the charges against Kurmasheva were “spurious”.
“Journalism is not a crime and Kurmasheva’s detention is yet more proof that Russia is determined to stifle independent reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia coordinator.
Both Kurmasheva and the Wall Street Journal’s Gershkovich are effectively hostages. As The Guardian notes, the “espionage charges against” Gershkovich “are widely viewed as spurious and an effort to blackmail Washington into releasing Russian prisoners, including spies and financial criminals with ties to powerful figures in Russia.”
Russia’s seizure of the two journalists follows the Biden administration’s 2022 hostage deal with Russia, in which it released a “merchant of death” responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, in exchange for a drug offender. Paying a huge ransom for nothing more than a drug offender was a very bad idea.
This Russian hostage-taking came after the Biden administration agreed to pay a $6 billion ransom to Iran in exchange for the release of five American hostages. Iran then gave the terrorist group Hamas weapons it used in its attack on Israel, in which it killed 32 Americans and 1400 Israelis. In that attack, Hamas kidnapped as many as 13 Americans and nearly 200 Israelis.
The Biden administration also encouraged foreign countries to take Americans hostage, or put them in prison, by trading a convicted Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” for Brittney Griner, a WNBA player who was convicted by a Russian court for illegally possessing drugs in Russia. The Biden administration could have traded the arms dealer for U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who served his country, and was convicted of spying — probably a trumped up charge — by Russia, and had been imprisoned for four years. Instead, it traded the arms dealer for Griner, who appears to be guilty of the offense for which she was convicted.
This was a very bad choice by the Biden administration, to leave an American servicemember trapped in Russia while paying Russia a steep price to release a drug offender. If Whelan is innocent, as is likely the case, his release should have been a higher priority than Griner’s because of his innocence. Even if he were guilty of spying for the U.S., that would only show that he was working for the U.S., and that the U.S. should have made his release a priority as a way of rewarding his loyalty.
As CBS noted, “Notably, the Griner-for-Bout exchange leaves retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan imprisoned in Russia. Whelan has been in Russian custody for nearly four years. He was convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false.”
Yet the Biden administration released a Russian arms dealer who caused the death of many people, in exchange for a single guilty person. He was serving a 25-year sentence, far longer than Griner’s.
As Ed Morrisey notes at Hot Air, the arms dealer Biden released is a very bad man who fueled conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of people:
Bout helped stoke conflicts around the world, from Afghanistan to Colombia, which is where he crossed the line with the US. Bout supplied arms to FARC at a time when they targeted Americans (among others), but Bout had been rumored to be dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda as well. It’s not difficult to imagine where Putin would like Bout to apply his talents now that he’s freed — the “annexed” areas of Ukraine — but we can probably bet that Bout will spread his wings a bit farther afield once staked and connected again. And that will likely put American lives at risk in places like Syria, Iraq, various African countries, and so on.
Trading him for Griner rather than Whelan made “little sense,” noted Morrisey:
The US insists that Whelan wasn’t a spy, but even if he wasn’t an intel asset, he’s still a former Marine. That should count for something in terms of priority along with the length of his incarceration in Russia…this looks like a poor choice.
Some have argued that Whelan was treated worse because Griner is a black lesbian, while Whelan is a straight white male, and thus is less fashionable among the progressive intelligentsia. Many progressives on Twitter celebrated Griner’s release because she is a “gay, black woman,” including teachers union head and progressive power-broker Randi Weingarten.
