As U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was nearing the end of her meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference in February, she requested all staff leave the room, aside from one aide each, according to a White House official and senior U.S. official familiar with the meeting.
As U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was nearing the end of her meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference in February, she requested all staff leave the room, aside from one aide each, according to a White House official and senior U.S. official familiar with the meeting.
Amid high-stakes negotiations to secure the release of a number of U.S. citizens wrongfully detained in Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan, it had become clear that a Russian assassin imprisoned in Germany—Vadim Krasikov—was the key to unlocking a long-sought-after prisoner exchange with Moscow.
Scholz had been reluctant to release Krasikov, who was convicted of murdering a Georgian citizen in broad daylight in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park and was serving a life sentence.
Harris raised the matter with the German chancellor during the Munich meeting, echoing a request made by U.S. President Joe Biden earlier that month during Scholz’s visit to the White House.
“It was in the run of high-level engagements and a back-and-forth that the president and the chancellor were having that Vice President Harris was actually able to sit face to face with Chancellor Scholz and talk through the elements of this,” said U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in a press briefing on Thursday.
While Thursday’s historic multi-country prisoner exchange, which saw the release of 16 people from Russian prisons, was the result of years of diplomatic efforts across the U.S. government and in collaboration with partners in Europe, Harris’s meetings in Munich helped to move negotiations forward, according to the two officials who spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity.
“The VP certainly moved the ball forward in the meeting with Scholz,” said the White House official.
Harris also tasked her staff with setting up a meeting with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob at Munich upon learning that the country had detained two Russians on suspicion of espionage, which could possibly be used as part of a trade with Moscow. That made Harris the most senior U.S. official to engage with the Slovenian leader on the matter at the time. The two Russians were ultimately released by Slovenia as part of the trade on Thursday, alongside six others from Poland, Norway, Germany, and the United States.
News of the vice president’s role in the negotiations comes as her foreign-policy record is being closely examined as she emerges as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee following Biden’s announcement last month that he had decided not to seek reelection.
In remarks on Thursday, Harris said of the prisoner swap, “We never stopped fighting for their release. And today, in spite of all of their suffering, it gives me great comfort to know that their horrible ordeal is finally over.”
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