The Oval Office was teary with joy as families of prisoners, including Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, spoke to their loved ones over the phone after being released in what marks the biggest US-Russia prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War.
The video lasts for two minutes and is a tearjerker. It was shared on President Joe Biden’s social media account as well as showed Gershkovich’s mother in tears while speaking to her son on phone “This is momma. Do you hear me? It’s your mom,” she says in a voice full of emotions.
President Biden hosted these families at White House and he expressed his relief at their release. “We just want to say how overwhelmed we are,” Biden said to former detainees who were surrounded by their families around his presidential Resolute Desk. “You’ve been wrongfully detained for a long time, and we are glad you are home.”
On Thursday, Russia freed Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, a previous Marine officer who was jailed there among others in return for 24 prisoners including Vadim Kasikov, a hitman from Russia who had been released by Germany. For more than one year this secretive multi-country operation was negotiated.
“Every parent, child, spouse and loved one who joined me today in the oval office has prayed for this day for so long” about which Joe Biden wrote regarding the long-awaited deal.
In addition to that this video captures when Biden informed them that they were coming back to America. In another moving moment Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza (who also got freed) speaks to his family “No word is strong enough for this. I thought I would die there; but even now I think my prison cell in Omsk where I am sleeping instead listening to your voice.”
These heart-warming meetings marked not only a major diplomatic victory but also put an end to suffering by wrongly detained detainees’ families.
