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Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva said she’s “finally being treated as a human being” following her release from Russian detention in a historic prisoner exchange between Washington and the Kremlin last week.
“I’ve been waking up from that nightmare,” Kurmasheva told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” in her first television interview since her release. “I had a feeling I fell asleep 10 months ago, and now I’m getting out of it.”
Kurmasheva and fellow freed Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan were reunited with their families in an emotional scene at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland last week. Kurmasheva rushed into the arms of her husband and daughters on the tarmac after greeting Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.
The US-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist had been detained in October 2023 and found guilty of spreading false information about the Russian army – charges her family and employer deny.
Kurmasheva and her husband, Pavel Butorin, have two daughters, including one who turned 13 just minutes after reuniting with her mother.
Asked by Tapper what it was like to learn she would be released, Kurmasheva said she didn’t believe she was free until “the very end.”
“It wasn’t until I saw my family that I believed that I’m free. Or, I would say when I was on a US airplane that I really believed that something like magic I was hoping for months was happening,” she continued.
The sweeping deal involved 24 detainees in total and was the result of years of complicated behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the US, Russia, Belarus and Germany, ultimately leading Berlin to agree to Moscow’s key demand – releasing convicted Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov.
The top US hostage affairs official addressed criticism that Russia may be more likely to take US hostages for leverage if the White House continues to approve prisoner swaps, telling Tapper earlier in the program that the Biden administration had to assume some risk in order to bring the Americans hostages home.
“You always assume a risk in these situations, and the president has been willing to make these hard decisions,” Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens said.
Carstens, who was also involved in the high-profile releases of former Marine Trevor Reed and WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russian detention, has served as the US’ top hostage negotiator since 2020. The diplomat told Tapper that he once had 54 hostage cases that are “now down to just over 20.”
“So we’ve made hard changes. We’ve traded some bad people to get good people, innocent people back,” Carstens said.
“And you would think that my numbers would be skyrocketing up and yet they’re not. They’re going in the opposite direction. So the math proves that assertion to be wrong,” he continued. “When we make these hard decisions and the president makes the tough call to send someone back in a trade like this, our numbers are actually going down.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested on Fox News on Sunday that the deal has increased Putin’s leverage on the West, saying there is a “cycle” that incentivizes the Kremlin to detain Americans on “trumped up charges” so they can exchange them for “Russian spies and killers.” The South Carolina Republican said that the “cycle needs to stop.”
Asked Monday whether President Joe Biden plans to contact the family of Marc Fogel, a US teacher in Russian prison who was not included in the swap, Carstens said that he can’t speak for Biden and has called on the Russians to release Fogel on humanitarian grounds.
Though Fogel has not been designated as “wrongfully detained” by the Biden administration, the US has brought back people that have not had the designation before, Carstens explained.
“Just because someone’s not necessarily designated wrongful doesn’t mean that we’re not also trying to work behind the scenes to bring them home as well,” he said.
This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
