National security advisor Jake Sullivan said on Thursday he believes the benefit of a prisoner swap negotiation bringing wrongly-imprisoned Americans home from overseas outweighs the risk of freeing convicted Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov as part of the exchange announced earlier that day.
The move freed journalist Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from a Russian prison along with 22 others from six different nations, including Krasikov, who was in a German prison for gunning down a man in a downtown Berlin park.