Historic Prisoner Swap

What's been hailed as the largest prisoner swap since the cold war has people talking.  What lead to it and why now?  Military Analyst Mike Lyons joined to break down what could be in play.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mike Lyons joined us this morning, CNN Military analyst and
all things. In cases like this where we had four
people coming back to the United States, Evan Gersakovich with
obviously the Wall Street Journal also fellow American Paul Whalen,
along with Vladimir Kara Murza and A'l Sue Kermasheva, a

(00:21):
journalist with dual Russian in the US citizenship. Mike, what
do you make of the exchange?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
And good morning, hey Tony. Great to be with you.
Overall positive. You have to look at it this way.
I take Israel's approach in that we get Americans back
no matter what, we would give up, what we had
to do. We had help from from our allies in
this case. But this has now become a business model
for Russia with regard to taking innocent people, journalists in

(00:48):
this case, and then trading them back for you know,
different kinds of you know, the criminals, hardened criminals at
Russia has been that wants back here. You know, We've
got to do some here in the future because if
as Americans think that they can go to Russia and
convince and convince Ladimir Putin and his people that run
that good country that this is. You know that they

(01:10):
can talk to them and try to expose them to
do something, they're going to be taken prisoner and we're
gonna have to give up this more in the future.
So something has to change that the POMPS is going
to change because we're going to just see a lot
more of it. But fundamentally glad that those Americans are home,
especially Evan considering he was a journalist and there was
a lot a lot of pressure to make sure he
was going to make it home.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, and it just goes against everything that I'll sometimes,
I think, just to give up the kind of hardened
criminals that Russia got, I think a lot of people
get upset about that. But to your point, what else
I to me, what else can you do? You have
to take what's given as fair as you can make it,

(01:52):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah. Yeah. And in the past, you know, go back
to the fifties and sixties, this was kind of spy
for spy. It was like for like when they did
this kind of prisoner exchanges. But we're so far past
that now they're just literally snatching people off the street,
similar to model we've seen in the Middle East, for example,
they just snatch anybody they can and use them as leverets,
knowing that the Americans will do this, and the same

(02:14):
with Israel's that the same kind of thing. I think
that it is a common about They would trade, you know,
a thousand people to get one even some recover the
body of one of their soldiers back. And if the
our enemy knows that that's that mentality, then they're going
to continue to do this.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Do you how would you change it? Really? I mean,
you know, it's pretty American in a couple of ways.
I think, you know, we used to say we're not
going to bargain with terrorists them at some point we did, right,
and that kind of thing. And then I go back
to when I was in military science, the majors I
was under talking about Vietnam, how they would take a hill,

(02:52):
it would be get taking back because you know, we
just those kind of things. We don't start things, but
we try to finished.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah. No, it's at the high moral ground that we
stand on and we again, I'm happy that they're back,
no question about it. And I don't I never believe
that one person matters anyway. From Russia's perspective, they wanted
to you know, Putin needs to surround himself with loyalists,
and that's what he gets back in these in these trades,
like from Brittany Griner, it was that Victor boot guy

(03:22):
and it was a Putin loyalist. And it just goes
to show you that the narrow mindedness of how that
leader runs that country literally only has a few people
he trusts that are around him, and you know he'll
do something like this in order to get them back
when they're captured in this case Germany for example, which
is a pretty significant thing for the Germans to do
that for the because the way this works is that

(03:44):
the leader has to give them amnesty and that's a
you know, it's a great dem of pardon in order
to get out of jail. It's kind of complex, no
question about it. But in this case, the Germans did that.
Joe Biden taking a lot of credit is the administration
had taken a lot of credit in some ways. It's
telling me that the Russians don't want Donald Trump as
president because they're willing to give Biden this kind of

(04:05):
victory right now, knowing full well that if Donald Trump
was president things would change pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
How would it change. What do you think, because but
Trump says that it would change too, He would he
would the deal.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, I think that the economics in thists are still
have not been exposed. And we also don't know the
total number of actual people that were returned back to Russia.
We know about this one guy for example, this this
Krazokov guy that that killed the Chemton fighter in Berlin.
We know he was released, but we still don't know
all the details of this. We know our Americans are home,

(04:37):
we know that is the case, but but there could
be things under the cover. We don't know if money
was transferred. We don't know anything else what's going on here.
So that's that's what Donald Trump is saying. I think
he's probably got a good point, and he would be
much more transparent to this and and he and likely
when he negotiates these kinds of things, the hammer comes
down a lot more so I would have I would
suspected this is why Russia did this deal right now,

(04:59):
to try to give the Biden administration a little bit
of push. I don't want that. They don't want anything
to do with Donald Trump being president. All right.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
That's Mike Lyons who joined this military analyst with CNN
and appreciate your time as always, Mike, thanks for being
a part of the show.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Thanks Tony Tukson.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
All right, yep we will.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
LA want to take it no.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
No more. God chose