ExclusivePart 1 | Untold Facts Behind Massive Prisoner Swap Among US & Russia

Hello all you freedom loving people. Welcome to another episode of Front Page. I'm your host, Scott Cameron Goulet. In August, the largest prisoner exchange was concluded between the West and Russia in more than three decades since the end of the Cold War. A total of 24 prisoners and hostages were exchanged. In addition to the United States and Russia, five other countries including Germany and Slovenia were also involved. So how was such a large-scale prisoner exchange negotiated? We've compiled a brief overview of some of the lesser known aspects of the negotiations behind the massive prisoner swap. Okay, let's get into it. One of the released American hostages was Evan Gershkovich, who is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Since Gershkovich was secretly arrested by Russia in March of last year, the Wall Street Journal has been tracking and reporting on every aspect of the campaign to have Gershkovich released from Russian custody. So let's start with Gershkovich's arrest. Gershkovich's parents were Jewish exiles from the former Soviet Union. Gershkovich spent his early years working as a chef and later as a journalist. Because of his Russian heritage, the Wall Street Journal assigned him as its Moscow Bureau Chief in 2017. After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine war, Gershkovich's reporting became sensitive because it differed from the official Russian line. At the time, unidentified men began to follow him on the street. Most of the other international media journalists had left Russia, but Gershkovich remained there. The Russian foreign ministry continued to renew his press card and his three-monthly visa. A few weeks before Gershkovich's arrest, a Moscow correspondent for another news outlet had his door knocked on by the police one night. The reporter turned out the lights in his apartment and sat motionless in the dark until the police left. In the hours that followed, the journalist quickly fled Russia with the help of a lawyer, but Gershkovich was not alerted. On March 29, 2023, Gershkovich arrived in Yekaterinburg in the morning. He planned to interview a source there in order to find out how Russia was refurbishing tanks and shipping them to Ukraine at an alarming rate. They were to meet at 4 p.m. at the Bukowski Grill, a steakhouse off Lenin Boulevard. His last contact with the outside world was when he arrived in Yekaterinburg. A colleague texted him to wish him a good day. Gershkovich replied, thanks man, I'll let you know how it goes. After that, Gershkovich's co-worker never heard from him again. By the end of the day, Gershkovich's cell phone remained off. Wall Street Journal staff logged on to video calls from New York, London and Warsaw, calling contacts in Yekaterinburg and Moscow. One reporter managed to contact Gershkovich's car driver who went back to the address of the apartment where he had picked Gershkovich up earlier, but he found only darkened windows. He replied, let's pray for the best. Another man repeatedly called on a local reporter whom Gershkovich had hired to help arrange some interviews. The Russian reporter sounded drunk and mumbled incoherently. Hours later, the Wall Street Journal called federal government contacts and sent notes to the State Department and the White House. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken returned the call promising, we'll get him back. They then contacted Gershkovich's mother Ella and told her that her son was missing. Shocked, Ella began browsing news sources in Russia and the US for clues and nine hours later, Ella saw a news report that her son had been arrested at the restaurant in Yekaterinburg and charged with espionage by Russian officials. A few days before the arrest of Gershkovich, one of the heads of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, General Vladislav Menshikov, informed President Vladimir Putin about the arrest plan. Menshikov was responsible for managing a large part of the FSB. This includes the Department of Counterintelligence Operations. This is a secret unit that monitors and captures American operatives. Officials in the department would send Putin intelligence on exactly what stories foreign journalists were following. Over the past few years, Putin has been using American hostages more and more frequently in exchange for Russian criminals who were arrested by the United States. After Christmas in December of 2018, the FSB arrested Paul Whelan, who is a former US Marine. He traveled to Moscow for a friend's wedding and they charged him with espionage. Putin's foreign policy advisor told the U.S. Ambassador a few days later that if the U.S. wanted Whelan back, the U.S. should release Viktor Bout. Bout was a Russian arms dealer who was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Bangkok in 2008. The FSB arrested another former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, in August of 2019 for assault. Reed, who was 28 at the time, was spending a summer vacation in Moscow studying Russian and visiting his girlfriend. Reed had served in the Camp David Guard when Biden was Vice President. Moscow wanted to trade Reed for former Russian Air Force pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko. He was a drug lord who was arrested by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2010. President Biden first met Vladimir Putin in June 2021 in Geneva for the world-famous U.S.-Russia summit. Putin proposed that the intelligence services from both sides establish a pipeline to explore the prisoner exchange and Biden agreed. Next, a U.S. women's basketball star, Brittany Greiner, was arrested at a Moscow airport in February of 2022. She was charged by Russia with drug smuggling after cannabis oil was found in an e-cigarette that she was carrying. A week later, the Russian-Ukraine war broke out. But the U.S.-Russian prisoner exchange pipeline was not closed. The negotiations resulted in two small-scale prisoner exchanges. In April of 2022, the U.S. exchanged Yaroshenko for Reed and in December, the United States exchanged Bout for Greiner. The hostage that Putin most wanted to exchange is a Russian assassin who was serving a life sentence in Germany. This was 58-year-old Vadim Krasikov. He was convicted of murder by a German trial. In 2019, Krasikov used Vadim Sokolov's Russian passport to sneak into Berlin. Then, in broad daylight and in full view of dozens of park visitors, waiters and diners at a nearby restaurant, he shot and killed a Chechen exile. He was then arrested by the German police when he removed his wig and tried to escape on an electric scooter. Krasikov barely said a word during the murder trial, nor did he tell investigators his real name. They assumed his name was Sokolov. Then, a Bulgarian investigative journalist named Kristof Grozev, one of the world's top investigators into Russian secret activities, helped expose his secret. Krasikov and Putin were so close that they would go to shooting ranges together. Western intelligence officials have speculated that Krasikov was Putin's personal bodyguard. Russian analysts suspect that their close relationship dates back to Putin's days as deputy mayor of his hometown of Saint Petersburg. Upon hearing of the news of the arrest of Krasikov, Putin said that the murderer committed the crime himself out of patriotism. Since 2021, Putin has been urging the Russian National Security Council to try and bring back Krasikov. During prisoner swap talks in 2022, Russia said that they would release Whelan if the U.S. could get Germany to release Krasikov. The White House had informed Berlin of the idea, but neither the German nor U.S. governments seemed willing to release a Russian professional killer for an ordinary American hostage. In March of 2023, just two weeks before the arrest of The Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, Russian FSB director Alexander Bortnikov told CIA director William Burns that Putin still intended to trade Whelan for Krasikov. Then, Gershkovich was quickly arrested by the Russians. The FSB may have thought that if the administration didn't want to trade Whelan for this deal, then maybe they would trade a reporter from a major U.S. newspaper. In Washington, Gershkovich's arrest appeared in President Biden's daily briefing and analysts at CIA headquarters conducted an equity check on Gershkovich in order to make sure he was not working for the U.S. government in some way. The results of the tests came in quickly and Gershkovich was not a government intelligence officer. This opened the door for the CIA to take on his case and provided an opportunity to quietly resolve the hostage crisis through government networks. Of course, there are drawbacks to the operation of hostage exchanges. The biggest drawback is that it encourages the opponent to continue to capture more Americans in order to achieve its goals. So, when Russia tried to make a deal with the Trump administration in 2019, President Trump ignored their requests. The White House first sent a blunt message to the Kremlin. They said Gershkovich is not a spy and must be released immediately. After that, the White House began to explore the possibility of a deal. Biden's presidential special envoy for hostage matters is Roger Carstens. He is a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets. He is a He was first appointed to this position by President Trump. His work ethic and abilities were so well received by the families of the missing Americans that they convinced President Biden to keep him on. In April of 2023, Carstens, under another name, discreetly reserved a table at a restaurant in Georgetown. He went there to meet an unusual guest, the Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev. On a napkin, Grozev gave Carstens a two-column list of Russian prisoners. He suggested that the U.S. could exchange these men for Gershkovich and Whelan. Grozev, however, pointed out that if the German government were to release the murderer Krasikov, it would have to be in exchange for Russia's most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny. We have previously featured Alexei Navalny in more detail in our YouTube program. You may remember that tall and handsome with bright blue eyes, Navalny is a Russian opposition leader who was considered a folk hero in Germany. Navalny dared to expose Putin's personal wealth and political corruption. In a YouTube video, Navalny revealed Putin's secret 1.2 billion dollar palace on the Black Sea coast. More than a quarter of Russian adults have seen the video. In 2020, Navalny was poisoned and he fell into a coma due to neurotoxic poisoning. The German government helped him leave Russia and they saved his life. Afterward, Navalny insisted on returning to Russia in order to join the resistance again. However, in January of 2021, Vladimir Putin's government also threw Navalny back into prison. Grozev explained to Carstens that this was the way to go to trade Krasikov for Navalny. So, Berlin was willing to release Krasikov, the murderer, in exchange for Navalny, the Russian defiant dissident. The other Russian prisoners on the napkin would be packaged with American hostages in a grand bargain. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also spoke with President Biden. He explained to Biden that Germany would be willing to exchange Krasikov for the possibility of a prisoner swap, but this was only a feasible roadmap. The implementation of the plan was still a complicated matter of adoption and compromise. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has a low approval rating in the polls, so the question became, will he take this political risk? On the other hand, Gershkovich's mother began her own efforts to save her son and Tucker Carlson also tried to bring Gershkovich back with him during his interview with Putin. But we will talk even more about the exciting details in our next episode. Thank you so much for watching FrontPage, your support here really encourages us to continue to tell you the truth. Again, thank you for watching FrontPage and we will see you next time.