One year ago was my fifth month of detention in a horrible, small, freezing prison cell in Kazan, Russia. I was sick and feverish, spending most days on a top bunk, which was slightly warmer and had a bit of sunlight, so I could read books and letters when I had the strength. All the prisoners were sick too, and we ran out of pain medication. I had one lemon left from a food package sent by friends before Christmas. I nibbled on it sparingly, trying to make it last as long as possible.
I tried keeping warm by wrapping up in two layers of grey, smelly blankets, but it was never enough. It was way below zero outside, and we had a small space heater that was broken more often than it worked. I couldn’t write letters to my loved ones, not that they would be sent anyway, because the pen in our cell was frozen solid.
Five months later, my picture was everywhere as I stepped off a plane to reunite with my family after nearly a year in a Russian prison. I’m a journalist with the American news organization Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was detained by Vladimir Putin for nothing more than the so-called crime of having an American passport and doing my job. The deal that brought me home was mindbogglingly complicated: It featured 26 people from seven countries, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Every day since, I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude as strangers from every part of the world stop and wish me and my family well. This global outpouring of goodwill has been made possible because people have come to see me, Evan, and the other former hostages as real people. We’re not simply statistics in a geopolitical game of cat-and-mouse, but people with real lives and families who love them.
Critics of hostage deals are concerned that they incentivize our enemies to continue imprisoning innocent Americans abroad to be used as bargaining chips in future exchanges. They have a point, and it’s an impossible dilemma for governments. Should they negotiate with rogue states and bring hostages home? Or refuse to engage with evil people and risk accusations of abandoning their citizens?
I have no easy answers, but I first want to commend President Donald Trump for securing the release of my fellow RFE/RL journalist, Andrey Kuznechyk, from Belarus last month after 1,175 days behind bars for the so-called crime of journalism. And I think often about Vladyslav Yesypenko, a Ukrainian RFE/RL journalist in a Russian-controlled prison in Crimea for more than 1,000 days, where he has endured unspeakable torture. Vlad is a regular person with a wife and 10-year-old daughter. He is well-known for being funny, charismatic, and having a magnetic personality. Everybody wants to be around Vlad, including, I’ve learned, his fellow prisoners who view his dark humor and defiance as a source of inspiration.
In one letter from jail to his wife, Vlad jokes that he’s “grateful for the rare privilege as a journalist to be able to see and experience FSB torture methods first-hand.” He says he told the FSB interrogators forcing him to do push-ups that he didn’t need a gym membership anymore.
I also think about Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist for RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service, who has been unjustly detained in Baku since last May. Farid was violently abducted near a metro station by unidentified men who later escorted him home, where they raided his and his then-pregnant wife’s apartment and seized their computer, phones, and car. Since his arrest on bogus charges, Farid has become a father for the first time but has only met his baby girl once, briefly, during a prison visit.
In addition to Vlad and Farid, several other RFE/RL colleagues are in prison today: one in Belarus and one in Russia. Globally, there were 361 journalists in jail as of December 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
To answer the question of whether to negotiate with evil regimes, there’s a growing consensus in the free world that the long-term solution lies in making the consequences of taking foreign hostages too expensive to make it worth anyone’s while.
An important new strategy memo from the State Department’s office that deals with foreign hostages recognizes that, right now, “For our adversaries who detain foreign nationals for political gain, the benefits unfortunately continue to outweigh the costs.”
To change the calculation, it calls for collective action from American partners who share our values of democracy and the rule of law. It wants to create a “strategic framework aimed at raising the cost for actors to engage in this abhorrent practice. … Ultimately, our goals are to build international norms against state actors holding foreign nationals as bargaining chips (often called hostage diplomacy) and to successfully prevent and deter these practices from happening.”
An example of this strategy would be to place the status of hostages at the top of the agenda of every diplomatic meeting with rogue states, whether it’s a discussion about trade, security, or anything, no matter how high-level, low-level, or trivial.
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These pressure points could add up and go a long way to proactively deterring bad actors from taking hostages in the first place. We must find all the ways we can to make the price too high for them to want to pay.
Since my release, I can’t stop hugging my daughters. I’m so grateful to everyone who helped secure my release, and I hope the rest of those unjustly detained prisoners around the world can hug their own families as soon as possible.
Alsu Kurmasheva is a journalist and editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was unjustly imprisoned in Russia between October 2023 and August 2024.