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For all their uncertainty about the exact origins of the case, U.S. officials understood perfectly how the Kremlin wanted it resolved. Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was “unbelievably explicit” in meetings with White House officials, according to the former U.S. official. Initially, Antonov proposed trading Whelan for three Russians in U.S. prisons: Maria Butina, a woman who had grown close to Republican operatives and National Rifle Association officials, and was convicted of acting as an unregistered Russian agent, in April, 2019; Viktor Bout, a notoriously prolific arms trader who was apprehended in a sting operation in Thailand, in 2008, and convicted by a U.S. court three years later; and Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot serving a twenty-year federal sentence for a drug-smuggling plot.
In response, White House officials said that Butina’s case would be resolved in accordance with her eighteen-month sentence; in October, 2019, she was released from U.S. prison and returned to Russia. Freeing Bout, the arms dealer, was considered out of the question. As one U.S. official familiar with the case put it, “It’s like if a major-league team signed me up out of the blue and then tried to trade me for the best player in baseball—we’re not equivalents.”
Antonov kept pushing for Yaroshenko, the pilot convicted of the drug-trafficking plot. He argued that Yaroshenko’s health was deteriorating and cited Whelan’s own problems with an untreated hernia that was causing him great pain. At one meeting, the former U.S. official said, Antonov got “a bit snippy” making his pitch. As the official remembers, Antonov said, “I see your poor guy with a hernia, and here’s our guy with his teeth falling out.” Antonov suggested both Whelan and Yaroshenko could be freed under the guise of a reciprocal medical release.
However Whelan was to be freed, it was clear that any deal would require attention at the highest levels of the White House and the State Department. But that was not forthcoming. Shortly after Whelan was arrested, then national-security adviser John Bolton brought his case to Trump’s attention. “Trump clearly had no interest in doing anything,” a former senior U.S. official said.
Taken from:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-american-prisoner-in-russia-trapped-between-putin-trump-and-thoroughly-soured-us-russian-relations
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