Paul Whelan claims he relayed information from the Ukrainian frontlines to the U.S. while in a Russian prison.
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During his time in a Russian labor camp, Paul Whelan shared information from fellow prisoners on the frontlines in Ukraine with the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and England using secret burner phones, he revealed in his first major interview with CBS's "Face the Nation" since being released in an August prisoner swap.
Whelan disclosed that about 450 prisoners from his camp accepted offers to serve as mercenaries with Russia's Wagner Group in Ukraine. They communicated back to him via "illegal cellphones," which he then relayed to the four governments, as he explained during the Sunday interview.
Whelan was released in August alongside 15 other Russian prisoners as part of a swap. He mentioned that guards in the prison camps "looked the other way," explaining, "A Russian prison guard earns $300 to $400 a month. You can give them a carton of cigarettes, and you can do just about anything you want."
A former Marine from Michigan, Whelan was imprisoned for more than five years after being arrested in Moscow on espionage charges. He was freed at the same time as Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter detained earlier in 2023 on similar accusations, in exchange for eight Russians held in the U.S., Germany, Norway, Slovenia, and Poland.
Russia claimed that Whelan was caught "red-handed" with a USB drive containing classified information in his room at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. However, his brother, David Whelan, stated that he was framed by Ilya Yatsenko, a Russian friend whom Paul had known for a decade. David asserted that Yatsenko had given Paul the USB drive, which he believed contained photographs, not classified material, leading to his arrest when agents broke into the hotel room.
Whelan was convicted in a closed-door trial in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in a prison camp in the Republic of Mordovia, about eight hours from Moscow. He described being cut off from the outside world but noted that ambassadors and consular teams from the four countries he communicated with visited him regularly, sometimes bringing him mail.
While Whelan remained in captivity, he watched other Americans, including basketball star Brittney Griner and fellow Marine Trevor Reed, being released in prisoner swaps. Griner was freed in late 2022 after her arrest for drug smuggling, while Reed was exchanged in April 2022 after nearly three years in a Russian jail.
In the CBS interview, Whelan recounted being told he would leave with Reed, only to hear on a prison radio that the swap had occurred without him. The news was "devastating," and when Griner was released while he remained behind, he hit his "lowest point," as U.S. officials informed him there were no more Russians available for exchange.
Whelan's eventual release was described as a "feat of diplomacy" by President Biden, who welcomed him back to U.S. soil alongside Vice President Harris.