Biden heaps praise on Slovenia PM for aiding release of Americans in major US-Russia prisoner swap

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden heaped praise on Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob on Tuesday for his role in the recent seven-nation prisoner swap that freed Americans Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva and Paul Whelan from Russian prison.

The deal, completed in August, was the largest U.S.-Russian prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, involving 24 people, many months of negotiations and concessions from other European countries — including Slovenia — that released Russians in their custody as part of the exchange.

"I want to thank you for your diplomacy and for your support and your leadership," Biden said at the start of his Oval Office meeting with the Central European leader. "You made it possible. That’s not hyperbole. You made it possible.”

Slovenia agreed to the release of Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva, two Russian spies who were living for years in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana while posing as Argentines operating a startup IT company and an online art gallery.

The couple, who had two children, reportedly used Ljubljana as their base to travel to neighboring NATO and EU member states, relay orders from Moscow and bring cash to other Russian sleeper agents. They were arrested in 2022.

Golob said the prisoner swap demonstrated that with a "little help of true friends, nothing is impossible.”

He is just the third Slovenian prime minister to be invited to Washington for a White House sit down with a president.

Prime Minister Janez Jansa was the country's last prime minister to get a White House meeting with a U.S. president, when George W. Bush hosted him in 2006. (Prime Minister Borut Pahor visited the White House in February 2011 to meet then U.S. Vice-President Biden. During that visit President Barack Obama briefly joined both leaders.)

Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, had spent 16 months in a Russian prison; Kurmasheva, a Russian-American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was also arrested last year; and Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, had been in Russian detention since his 2018 arrest.

Russia convicted all three on what the White House rejected as trumped-up charges of espionage for Gershkovich and Whelan and spreading of false information for Kurmasheva.

“We made it clear to anyone who questions whether our allies matter," Biden said.

The two leaders' agenda included talks on the war in Ukraine, energy security, and their countries' shared approach to the Western Balkans, according to the White House.

Golob has also been an outspoken critic of Israel's handling the war in Gaza. Last month, Golob in his address at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to “stop the bloodshed.”

“Mr. Netanyahu, stop this war now,” he said, pounding the lectern for emphasis.

The meeting with Golob comes on the heels of Biden's visit to Berlin last week that was made in part to thank German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his country's cooperation in the prisoner swap.

Scholz agreed to release Vadim Krasikov, a Russian who was convicted of the 2019 murder of a 40-year-old Georgian citizen and later claimed asylum in Germany.