Editorial: Russia's American hostages finally return home

Americans of all political persuasions should celebrate the release of their countrymen and women from Russian prison cells. While the price was steep, the United States has an obligation to move heaven and earth to bring home its citizens who are unjustly detained in hostile foreign lands.

On Thursday, the Biden administration announced a multination prisoner exchange with Russia, the largest since the end of the Cold War. The deal involved two dozen men and women, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe, all American citizens languishing in Russian custody.

Also freed were a number of Russian activists jailed in their native country for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or for opposing the Putin regime in general.

“Today is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world,” President Joe Biden said in regard to the negotiations that led to the swap. “Friends you could trust, work with and depend upon, especially in matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this.”

Perhaps inevitably, the good news soon became bogged down in political bickering before the freed Americans had even landed in their homeland. Donald Trump called the deal an “embarrassment,” arguing that Vladimir Putin got the better of it, particularly given that the swap involved a Russian assassin doing time in Germany for gunning down “a Chechen separatist fighter in broad daylight” in a Berlin park five years ago, according to The New York Times.

There’s a time and a place for Trump to criticize Biden’s foreign policy record. That’s certainly fair game. But this was neither. The families of those who have waited excruciatingly for good news about their loved ones — being held as hostages by Russia to extract concessions from the West — deserve better. The fact that America and its Western allies were forced to turn over a heinous killer — with convicted computer hackers and spies — to facilitate the release of prisoners jailed on dubious charges and subjected to Russian show trials is a blot on Putin, not on the White House.

Indeed, international diplomacy is often messy. “In order to secure the release of innocent people overseas and innocent Americans,” one administration official told CNN, “you have to make some tough decisions.”

The nation should salute their return to our shores. There will be plenty of time in the future to debate the particulars.