Emma Tucker, the Journal’s top editor, called it a “day of great joy” and said: “I cannot even begin to describe the happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you wil feel the same.”

Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”

In addition to Kara-Murza, a Kremlin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer serving 25 years on charges of treason widely seen as politically motivated, the Russians released included Oleg Orlov, co-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial, and associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Five German citizens also were released, including a German national held in Belarus.

The Russian side got Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.

Russia also received two alleged sleeper agents who were jailed in Slovenia, as well as three men charged by federal authorities in the US, including Roman Seleznev, a convicted computer hacker and the son of a Russian lawmaker, and Vadim Konoshchenok, a suspected Russian intelligence operative accused of providing American-made electronics and ammunition to the Russian military. Norway returned an academic arrested on suspicions of being a Russian spy, and Poland also sent back a man it detained.

Putin gave Russian nationals freed in an historic prisoner exchange with the West a hero’s welcome on Thursday as they stepped off a plane in Moscow, promising them state awards and a conversation about their futures.

The first to disembark, wearing a baseball cap and a tracksuit top, was Krasikov, the hitman, whom Putin hugged.

Inside the airport building, Putin, who looked visibly pleased, told the returnees:

“First of all, I would like to congratulate you all on your return to the Motherland. Now I would like to address those of you who have a direct connection to military service. I want to thank you for your loyalty to your oath and your duty to your Motherland, which has never forgotten you for a moment.

“All of you will be presented with state awards. I will see you again, we will talk about your future.”

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich, which Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

In a trial that concluded in two days in secrecy in the same week as Gershkovich’s, Kurmasheva was convicted on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military that her family, employer and US officials rejected.

Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.

US officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.

Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after travelling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the US have also said were false and trumped up, and he was serving a 16-year prison sentence.

After Thursday’s deal, other Americans remain detained in Russia including teacher Marc Fogel and Ksenia Karelina.

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