Us president Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to meet the Americans prisoners freed from Russian custody when they arrive back in US.
Biden and Harris -now presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 2024 election – will meet those returning to US soil at 11.30pm ET today, according to US media reports.
The White House just issued updated guidance stating that Biden and Harris will travel to Joint Base Andrews, a military facility in Maryland, to “greet Americans freed from Russia.”
They are expected to stay for about half an hour before returning to Washington, D.C.
While Biden will travel from the White House and Harris from Houston, Texas, where she has been attending the memorial for the late congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
Russia on Thursday (August 1) released imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan as part of a major prisoner swap with the United States.
The men were jailed in Russia on espionage charges that they and the US deny.
The prisoners were flown to Turkey’s capital Ankara from Russia, the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Belarus under the complex deal, the Turkish presidency said.
During a White House briefing with the families of the US citizens incarcerated in Russia, President Joe Biden said, “Today, three American citizens and one American green-card holder who were unjustly imprisoned in Russia are finally coming home: Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy. All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia—including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country,” the statement said.
Hailing the move, Harris said, ” Over many years, President Biden and I and our team have engaged in complex diplomatic negotiations to bring these wrongfully detained Americans home. We never stopped fighting for their release. And today, in spite of all of their suffering, it gives me great comfort to know that their horrible ordeal is finally over.”
Putin welcomes Russians returning to Moscow after prisoner swap
Russian nationals involved in a historic prisoner swap with Western countries arrived in Moscow late on Thursday and were greeted at the airport by President Vladimir Putin, according to Russian news agencies.
The agencies quoted Putin as saying that the eight returnees would all be presented with state awards and that he told them that their homeland “had not forgotten them, not for a single minute”.
(With inputs from agencies)
