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Former US President Donald Trump has criticized President Joe Biden’s prisoner exchange deal with Moscow, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin got the better end of the bargain.

Key Points:

• I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal, Quote by Trump
• We got 59 hostages, I never paid anything, Quote by Trump
• Trump has changed his tone, accusing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for the presidency against Trump, of being poor negotiators who paid too high a price for Gershkovich’s freedom

Courtesy Photo Source: on

Earlier this week, the US and Russia conducted a prisoner exchange involving a total of 26 individuals held in various countries, marking the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War. Among those sent to the West were Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan, both of whom had been convicted of espionage in Russia, as well as 14 other foreign agents, opposition activists, and criminals.

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In return, ten Russian nationals were sent to Moscow, including alleged intelligence agents and cybercriminals. The most prominent name among them was Vadim Krasikov, an FSB agent convicted of murdering a former Chechen militant commander in Germany in 2021.

Courtesy Photo: AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Georgia on Saturday. “Did you see the deal we made? They released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world, some of the most evil killers they got.”

“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” he continued, questioning whether the exchange sets a bad precedent.

Before the swap, Trump claimed that only he could secure Gershkovich's release. In a post on his Truth Social platform in May, he wrote that the Wall Street Journal reporter “will be released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” adding that the US would be “paying nothing” for his return.

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Now that Gershkovich is back in the US, Trump has changed his tone, accusing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for the presidency against Trump, of being poor negotiators who paid too high a price for Gershkovich’s freedom.

“We got 59 hostages, I never paid anything,” Trump told his supporters on Saturday. However, while Trump did secure the release of dozens of American prisoners during his presidency without making any concessions, he did engage in prisoner swaps on multiple occasions. These included two one-for-one exchanges with Iran and the 2019 exchange of an American and an Australian for three senior Taliban leaders held in an Afghan jail.

Courtesy Source: https://www.rt.com/