Freed American Paul Whelan thanks lawmakers for bringing him home during Capitol visit

With the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop at dusk, freed American Paul Whelan, who recently completed a government resettlement program in Texas after returning from wrongful detention in Russia, thanked lawmakers who worked to help secure his release.

Whelan hailed a “bipartisan effort that brought me home” after spending the day meeting with lawmakers who advocated on his behalf from his home state of Michigan and elsewhere.

“The Michigan delegation brought me back here,” he said.

“You know, it lasted five years, seven months and five days,” he added of his time in Russian detention. “I counted every one of them.”

The former Marine revealed that he spent the last five days of his detention in the Russian prison in solitary confinement.

“I couldn’t leave my cell,” he said, “but I managed to get home.”

Whelan wouldn’t give a glimpse of what’s next — saying only that he needs a new car and is suddenly in a place with electric and driverless vehicles — but said he’s involved in discussions about how to support other Americans unjustly detained around the world.

“We’re coming for you,” Whelan told these Americans. “The United States is not going to let people like me, Marc, [Fogel]Trevor [Reed]Brittney [Griner, who was released in December 2022] “They are languishing in foreign prisons. It may take time, but we will get them, and all the others.”

Whelan greeted reporters he knew by name or face, recalling the exact month he spoke to them via a phone smuggled out of prison. He thanked them for covering his story.

He also thanked “all the people who work for agencies I will never meet, people I will never know, their staff members, everyone who has been involved at every level.”

Rep. Haley Stevens, who represents Whelan’s district in Congress, told ABC News she plans to rely on him to craft complex policies to mitigate foreign detentions like his.

“Well, he may not know it, but I intend to stay in touch with him for a very long time, as long as he accepts it, because there is a lot to learn from his experience,” she said.

She noted that Whelan’s case was “the first” in a series of high-profile detentions in Russia, including those of Griner and Evan Gershkovich, and that it “certainly changed the relationship that the United States had with Russia, even before the war in Ukraine began.”

“Our message to Russia is this: In the face of your shenanigans and your illegal, unjust and unlawful behavior, we, the United States of America, stand united. We will fight for our people,” she said. “We will bring them home and we will win.”

Whelan returned to the United States on August 2 after five and a half years in a Russian penal colony.

Russian authorities released Whelan, along with American journalists Gershkovic and Alsu Kurmasheva, as part of a multi-country deal that released eight Russian prisoners abroad. The exchange of 26 people is the largest between the United States and Russia since the Cold War.

Whelan was arrested in Moscow in 2019 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, who was a frequent visitor to the city, was found to be wrongfully detained by the U.S. State Department.

The former Marine was not the only former Russian prisoner at the Capitol on Tuesday. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian and British citizen whose release was secured by the United States, met with lawmakers. Kara-Murza was imprisoned in Russia for two years for his opposition to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.