Evan Gershkovich

The massive prisoner swap which led to Russia’s release of prisoners Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among many others, is the greatest gift their families and loved ones could ever hope for — in several cases, it is a lifesaving development. But it also serves as an indication of just how much the practice has become a weapon of the world’s great powers. For my family, the news is deeply personal. Vladimir, a longtime dissident imprisoned for the crime of speaking out against the war in Ukraine in remarks to the state legislature of Arizona, was a pallbearer along with me for my father-in-law, John McCain. My wife joined with his, Evgenia, to speak to a bicameral congressional committee earlier this year to advocate for his release.

The death of Alexei Navalny has dramatically increased the risk for other key figures currently imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, whether for reasons of dissident behavior, protest against the war in Ukraine or supposed suspicion of espionage. The fact that Putin would cross this line, and do so with impunity in the midst of both the Munich Security Conference and a western influence push spearheaded by willing patsy Tucker Carlson, is a sign that we are now in a new reality — one that it is the duty of the next administration to irrevocably reverse. In the past, when the United States’s top officials identified an American citizen or important dissident held in another nation and said “do not touch this person, lest you find out what terror awaits you,” it meant something.

The legacy of John McCain was on full view in the halls of Congress this week, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers repeatedly invoked his legacy to demand that Russia release a journalist detained for criticizing Vladimir Putin. One year ago, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian political dissident and journalist, was arrested by Putin’s regime on trumped-up charges of spreading false information about Russia’s military during a speech he gave in McCain’s home state of Arizona. To commemorate his detention, and to call for his release, the McCain Institute hosted an event in the nation’s capital where lawmakers from both parties — who served jointly with McCain for almost 100 years between them — rallied to Kara-Murza’s defense.