Watch: Putin meets Russians released in prisoner exchange

The Russian president personally welcomed the returning captives to Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin has personally greeted the Russians whose release from Western incarceration was secured by a major exchange on Thursday.

Putin came to the Vnukovo-2 airport outside Moscow with Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, FSB chief Aleksandar Bortnikov and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) head Sergey Naryshkin.

“I want to thank you all for staying faithful to your oaths, your duty, and your country that has not forgotten you,” Putin told the returnees. “We will see each other again. We will talk about your future. Now I just want to congratulate you on your return.”

While officials in both Moscow and Washington have given little in the way of details, multiple media outlets have reported that a total of 26 people ended up being exchanged on Thursday.

According to the FSB, eight Russian nationals and two children returned from the West, in exchange for individuals who’d “acted in the interests of foreign states to the detriment of the security of the Russian Federation.”

The White House has said that three American nationals and several Russian “political prisoners” were secured in the exchange, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and British-Russian citizen Vladimir Kara-Murza.

As the swap was underway in Türkiye, Putin signed the decree officially pardoning 16 people convicted of various crimes in Russia, including Whelan, Gershkovich, Kara-Murza, Kurmasheva, and several others.

Thursday’s exchange was the biggest in modern history, topped only by the swap of 25 Americans for three Soviets and a Pole in 1985.

In 2010, Putin also greeted in person a group of Russians rounded up in the US as spies, among whom was Anna Chapman. A total of ten Russian nationals were exchanged for four Western agents, among whom was Sergei Skripal.