CNN
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Paul Whelan marked five years in Russian detention on Thursday – a grim milestone that the ex-US Marine hoped he would never see.
In a call with CNN on Thursday, Whelan called on President Joe Biden to “please use every resource available to secure my release as you would do if your own son had been taken hostage.”
“I’m more than past ready to return home and I’m counting on the US government to come for me and soon. The time is now to take decisive action and bring this debacle to a close,” Whelan told CNN from his prison camp in Mordovia.
In the more than half a dozen phone conversations Whelan has had with CNN, he has expressed both confidence that the US government is working to secure his release and immense frustration that those efforts have not yielded success.
Whelan told CNN last week that it was “surreal” that he was marking five years in Russian detention.
“I would ask President Biden to pull out the stops, cross the red lines, and do whatever needs to be done to get this case resolved and to get me home. If my life is not worth that effort, then I don’t know what is,” Whelan told CNN last week.
In recent phone calls, Whelan has voiced exasperation that the US claims his case is “a priority” but has not found a way to bring him home. He has on multiple occasions conveyed a sense of abandonment and concern he will be left behind again, citing the release of two other Americans from Russia in a prisoner swap last year.
“I am wondering what they’re going to do next. If there’s no diplomatic solution, what comes next? What are they prepared to do to honor that promise to get me home? If they’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping that something sticks and they can come up with a quick agreement, that’s not a very good policy,” Whelan told CNN in late November.
Whelan has also increasingly expressed fear for his safety, telling CNN last week that he was being targeted by an official at the prison camp after being assaulted by another prisoner.
Whelan was arrested in Moscow on December 28, 2018, which he says he visited for a friend’s wedding, and imprisoned on charges of espionage that he has consistently and vehemently denied.
“If I had known that there would be any sort of problem, I would never have come here,” Whelan said last week.
He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020. He has been serving that sentence at a remote prison camp in Mordovia, where he does manual labor at the prison’s clothing factory.
Whelan was designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department in May 2020.
For Whelan and his family, the anniversary of his arrest is an acute reminder of how much they have lost. But the painful fact that five years have gone by is never far from their minds.
“This is five years of my life and I can’t get back, five years of my parents’ life that we can’t get back,” Whelan told CNN in October.
Whelan’s parents are in their 80s, and he told CNN in May, “I know this is taking its toll on my parents and that’s the unfortunate thing.”
“It’s a concern for me that I won’t see them again,” Whelan echoed in the call last week.
The family’s beloved dog, Flora, about whom Whelan spoke fondly during his May call with CNN, passed away the following month.
“I never thought I would be here not to see my cat, not to see my dog and they both passed away. Relatives have passed away. Friends have moved on. I’m very concerned that I won’t get home to see my parents,” Whelan told CNN last week.
And Thursday was particularly difficult, Whelan told CNN, “because most of the people in the camp realize that today is the five-year anniversary, and so they’ve been asking me questions about what the government is doing or not doing.”
You know, I have photographs of my dog and my…