Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for Hostage Affairs, defended the recent prisoner swap between the U.S. and Russia against Republican claims that the deal will embolden the Russia's detention efforts.
Carstens, who was appointed to his post by former President Donald Trump in 2020, told CNN this week that there's no precedent for concerns that the prisoner swap deal, which freed 16 people and was the largest such swap since the Cold War, will only encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to increasingly detain Americans who travel to the country.
"The funny thing is, it's just not proving true," Carstens said in an interview with Jake Tapper on Monday. "There was a time when I had 54 cases. I'm now down to just over 20. So we've made hard changes. We've traded some bad people to get good people, innocent people, back. And you would think that my numbers would be skyrocketing up, and yet they're not. They're going in the opposite direction."
Carsten added: "So the math proves that assertion could be wrong when we make these hard decisions and the president makes the tough call to send someone back in a trade like this, our numbers are actually going down."
Carstens also commented on the release of convicted Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been serving a life sentence in Germany before the swap.
"It's hard to determine what he's going to do in the future," Carstens said. "Obviously, we hope he goes back and does nothing. There's a phrase that the moral imperative outweighs the moral hazard.
"What happens in the future with him, we don't know. We can hope. We can take different mitigation steps to hopefully make sure that he behaves himself as life goes forward, but you always assume a risk in these situations."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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