Hostage Deals Are Not Triumphant Victories
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Opinion

Hostage Deals Are Not Triumphant Victories

Ben Shapiro

On Thursday, the United States and its allies secured a deal with Russia in order to return some 16 people, including multiple Americans, from the Russians. The Russians have basically taken several Americans hostage over the course of the last several years, and the United States traded a bunch of murderers as terrorists and spies for these hostages.

This is being treated as a massive win for the Biden administration by the media and the Biden administration itself. In return for Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, Russia retrieved eight people, including a convicted murderer who shot dead a former Chechen rebel leader in Berlin, a Russian agent accused of helping give sensitive American electronics and ammunition to Russia, a man involved in what American authorities calledan elaborate hack-to-trade scheme that netted approximately $93 million through securities trades based on confidential corporate information stolen from US computer networks,” and four other convicted spies.

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