JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — Michigan’s Paul Whelan set his feet on U.S. soil for the first time in more than 5½ years Thursday night after a flight carrying him and two other Americans landed here shortly after 11:40 p.m.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greeted Whelan on the tarmac at Andrews, an Air Force base in suburban Maryland.
Whelan emerged first from the plane full of detainees freed from Russia earlier in the day and was greeted at the bottom of the steps by Biden, who gripped his arm and later hugged him, then spoke closely to Harris. Biden later gave Whelan the American flag pin off his suit jacket.
Whelan then took a few steps to embrace his sister, Elizabeth, who spent years meeting with Biden administration officials seeking his release from a Russian penal colony on charges of espionage that Whelan and the State Department have said were bogus.
Whelan, 54, of Novi was part of a historic prisoner swap Thursday that also led to the release by Russia of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as part of the largest such exchange since the Cold War.
In an interview on the tarmac with The Detroit News, Whelan said he was tired but “happy to be back.”
Asked how he persevered in captivity, Whelan said he took it day by day.
“I had to be a little patient. You do it day by day. Every day, I sang the national anthem to my four countries,” said Whelan, who is a citizen of the United States, Canada, Britain and Ireland. “And I did it one step at a time.”
Whelan thanked the negotiators who worked to secure his release for months. And about the remaining Americans who are still held captive, he said: “Just hang in there. We’re coming for you.”
Biden addressed reporters on the tarmac about his administration’s negotiations in the prisoner swap involving U.S. allies Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland.
“I don’t buy this idea that you let these people rot in jail,” Biden told reporters.
Gershkovich followed Whelan as the second person to emerge from the plane and was hugged by Harris.
Harris, who is succeeding Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, called the reunion of Whelan and Gershkovich with their families an “extraordinary day” for the country.
“And I’m very thankful for our president and what he has done over his entire career, but in particular as it relates to these families and these individuals,” Harris of Biden. “This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy.”
Family members of the detainees waited on the tarmac late Thursday as the plane’s lights arrived in the distance, and it touched down and then taxied to stop in front of a clutch of press photographers and news cameras gathered for the occasion.
Both Whelan and Gershkovich had been jailed on what they and U.S. officials decried as bogus espionage charges. Whelan was arrested in December 2018 while in Moscow for a friend’s wedding. Convicted in 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor that he was serving at a labor camp in remote Mordovia, toiling at a garment factory.
Whelan said he was transferred Saturday from the Russian penal colony where he had been imprisoned in Mordovia, about 210 miles east of Moscow, to the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow.
It wasn’t until the plane was over English airspace that Whelan, who has dual citizenship in Britain, began to celebrate his release from imprisonment in Russia.
“I’m a British citizen, so once we were in England, then Ireland and then across Canada and into America, then I started celebrating,” Whelan told The Detroit News.
Whelan said he’s headed to Texas.
He could be transported to a military installation — possibly Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where both American basketball star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed were taken after their release from Russia — for medical care and post-isolation support.
It was unclear how soon his family members might be able to visit him there, or if his sister would be permitted to accompany him.
When asked what was the first he wanted to do back in the states, the Michigan man replied: “Probably eat a steak.”
