US journalist Evan Gershkovich embraced his family as well as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hours after being released from prison in Russia.
The Wall Street Journal reporter was freed as part of the US and Russia’s biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history.
The reporter was held by his mother Ella Milman as he arrived at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.He then had an emotional exchange with the US President as Mr Biden shook his hand before hugging the journalist.
Vice President Ms Harris also greeted Mr Gershkovic, warmly placing a hand on his arm.
Also among those released by Moscow on Thursday include Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive with joint British nationality from Michigan, and dual Russian-British dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Welcoming the news, Sir Keir Starmer said: "I welcome the release of a number of prisoners held in Russia, including Vladimir Kara-Murza, Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich.
"We will continue to call on Russia to uphold freedom of political expression."
The multinational deal sets some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.
The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the US in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries.
Russia secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and others on charges widely considered bogus by UK and US authorities.
US president Joe Biden called the news an "incredible relief" and said the detainees' "brutal ordeal was over."
"Today is a powerful example of why it's vital to have friends in this world," he said in an address from the White House while joined by families of four — three Americans and one green card holder — who were released.
Emma Tucker, the Wall Street 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."
In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president and CEO Stephen Capus confirmed a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.
Mr Capus said the broadcaster welcomed "news of Alsu's imminent release and are grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia".
Ms Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.
The deal would be the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the US in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year of marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
US President Joe 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, he said: "We're also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world."
Russia also got back 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, according to a statement from the Turkish government.
Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startlingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29 2023, while on a reporting trip to the 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 the country 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 pre-trial 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 Mr Biden's Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.
Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Mr Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after travelling to Russia for a wedding. Mr Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the US have also said were false and trumped up, and he is serving a 16-year prison sentence.
Mr Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Mr Reed and Mr Griner.
