WASHINGTON — Presidents love to bask in the patriotic glow of bringing hostages home — none more than Donald Trump.
Negotiations over prisoner swaps can be tough and the prices can be high, and experts warn that quickly giving hostage-takers the concessions they want gives them incentives for further kidnappings. But the immediate rewards are unambiguous: Americans, regardless of party, want their compatriots back.
A trade executed Tuesday returned Marc Fogel to the United States after years of imprisonment in Russia in exchange for Alexander Vinnik, who pleaded guilty in the United States to money-laundering charges. Fogel, a teacher who was jailed for possessing marijuana he used to treat chronic pain, wore a U.S. flag across his shoulders as Trump greeted him at the White House on Tuesday night.
“He’s made bringing Americans home a top priority, and people respond to that,” the U.S. special envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, told reporters Wednesday. “Usually, he’ll empower his team. He’ll say, ‘I want this person out.’ We come up with options. He approves them and then usually makes calls after” to secure deals.
With the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looming and little apparent progress having been made toward ending the war, Trump’s quiet move this week may soften Washington-Moscow relations. That, in turn, could help lay the groundwork for the deal Trump has promised to bring the hostilities in Europe to a close.
“The smartest thing you can do to curry favor with the president of the United States is bring Americans home,” Boehler said. “He’s been clear about that.”
Administration officials would not disclose what, if anything, else Moscow may have gained in the negotiations beyond Vinnik’s freedom. In the past, Russia has repeatedly refused to release detained Americans without receiving in return its citizens who are of top importance to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin insisted, for instance, on the release of a Russian assassin imprisoned in Germany as part of a prisoner swap President Joe Biden’s administration negotiated last fall.
“The Trump administration traditionally has framed these victories as something that they got without giving anything up,” said Dani Gilbert, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University who studies hostage negotiations. “It’s really difficult for me to imagine a world in which the Trump administration’s statements about Ukraine in the last 48 hours were not quid pro quo for Fogel’s release.”
On Wednesday, the Trump administration outlined new parameters for a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine that are far more generous than any from the Biden administration. In a speech in Brussels on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed the framework, which appeared to favor Putin’s demands that Ukraine not recover all of its lost territory and that it not be admitted to NATO.
Trump also held separate phone calls Wednesday with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he tasked his top national security aides with negotiating an end to the war. Vice President JD Vance plans to meet with Zelenskyy this week on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.
Republicans in Congress, with Trump’s support, cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine in 2023. Democrats warned that Trump would abandon Ukraine, handing Putin a long-sought victory. Trump has insisted that he secure a peace deal that does not reward Moscow.
How it happened
Trump assigned Steve Witkoff, a longtime friend who is his special envoy for the Middle East, to take the lead on engaging with the Russians about a deal for Fogel. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, U.S. officials have not engaged with Russian officials directly, except in rare cases of coordination between military leaders to avoid accidents in combat zones.
Trump’s blessing set off a flurry of secret discussions across multiple governments, some involving the crown prince of Saudi Arabia as an interlocutor, that culminated in Russia’s release of Fogel, a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania. Witkoff chartered his private plane to Moscow to pick him up.
“I got a call that he was going to be at the airport,” Witkoff said of Fogel on Wednesday. “And I called the president. He was delighted. He said, ‘Get over there fast.’”
While the effort took a couple of weeks, the 72 hours preceding Fogel’s release were the most critical, and events unfolded quickly.
Around 5:40 p.m. Monday, Witkoff’s plane took off from Dulles International Airport in Virginia, headed directly for Moscow.
It was 2:30 a.m. in Moscow when Witkoff and two aides to Boehler touched down on the tarmac.
U.S. officials were on the ground in western Russia for less than 11 hours, based on an analysis of the flight pattern of Witkoff’s private plane.
At the airport, they walked Fogel onto the aircraft. After they waited for the plane to de-ice, with Fogel on board, the flight took off from Moscow that evening en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Fogel posed for a photograph holding a beverage and a cheese plate.
Once the plane was out of Russian airspace, Fogel called his family. “We called everybody back in the United States,” Witkoff said. “He was doing a jig.”
Witkoff’s portfolio now may expand to include U.S. efforts to broker a deal to end the war.
“Witkoff would do whatever the president asked of him,” a White House official said.
Partisan advantage
Trump has secured the releases of 10 Americans held by foreign governments since he took office less than a month ago. That accomplishment has delivered him bipartisan plaudits amid a broader landscape of ideological warfare in the nation’s capital. Trump is keenly aware of the political credit that comes with freeing detained Americans, and his White House pumped out a news release touting support for the deal from officials in both parties.
“Marc Fogel’s return home is long overdue — and I know all of Pennsylvania, especially his family, will be welcoming him back with open arms,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said Tuesday on X as he expressed gratitude to Trump and Witkoff. “I want to thank @POTUS and @SteveWitkoff for their efforts in finally bringing Marc home.”
At the same time, Trump and his aides have sought to turn the returns into a partisan advantage. For years, Trump leveled heavy criticism at Biden for the deals he secured. They included a swap that freed WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and one in which the United States released $6 billion for Iran — and then blocked the money amid political blowback — in exchange for five Americans.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Biden for not having gotten Fogel out of Russia, creating a direct contrast between the two presidents.
“This is something that the Biden administration allegedly tried to do for 3½ years,” Leavitt said at her regular briefing with reporters. “I think you all should go back and ask some of those Biden administration officials what they even tried to do, and why weren’t they successful? Because for 3½ years, Marc Fogel sat in a Russian prison, and it took President Trump three weeks to get him back on American soil.”
Former Biden administration officials welcomed the news that Fogel had been released but took major issue with the Trump team’s characterization of hostage negotiations over the last four years.
“Trump left Trevor Reed and Paul Whelan in Russia. We got them out,” a Biden administration national security official said. “He left the Citgo 6 in Venezuela. We got them out. He left Mark Frerichs in Afghanistan. We got him out. He left multiple Americans in Iran. We got them home.”
More broadly, the Biden administration official said, “We brought home dramatically more Americans than he did — and there were fewer unjustly detained Americans when we left office than when he left office” the first time.
First-term Trump administration officials defend their record, too.
Edward McMullen, a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland who was involved when the United States conducted a prisoner exchange with Iran during Trump’s first term, said that not only has Trump made returning detained Americans a priority, but he is open to dialogue in a way others may resist.
“This isn’t anything new. When the president was in his first term, he made it a priority to try and get every prisoner that was held illegally and under duress out of Iran, out of numerous countries where they were being held,” McMullen said. “This is what it takes: a conversation, a recognition that dialogue does produce results, and that’s where the president has that amazing success.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
