Exclusive: Paul Whelan urges Biden admin to take ‘decisive action’ to secure his release as he surpasses 2,000 days in Russian custody

CNN —

Detained American Paul Whelan marked another grim milestone this week as he surpassed 2,000 days in Russian custody, telling CNN that it was “just an incredible amount of time” to spend in detention “for a crime that never occurred” as he urged the Biden administration to take “decisive action” to bring him and fellow detained American Evan Gershkovich home.

“When you think of 2,000 days, how long that actually is, how many years, how many months, it’s an incredible number,” said Whelan, who called CNN Friday exclusively from his remote prison camp in Mordovia, Russia.

“You go to university to earn a bachelor’s degree – that’s four years. You’re generally in high school for three or four years. Even people go into the military, and they serve four years. So when you think of five and a half years, it’s just an incredible amount of time,” he said.

Whelan, who has been declared wrongfully detained by the US State Department, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on espionage charges he has consistently and vehemently denied.

While he believes that the US government has taken his case seriously, the ex-Marine told CNN that he wants it to take it “more seriously.”

“There should be decisive action taken,” Whelan said. “The US needs to go out and do something – fill up Guantanamo Bay with Russian officials, arrest Russian spies, do something that makes the Kremlin sit up and take notice and say, ‘Okay, yeah, right, now it’s time that we’re gonna get Evan and Paul back and then we want back what you’ve got of ours, and we’ll call it a day,’” he described.

“Until decisive action is taken, until there’s a strong response to this sort of behavior, they’ll keep