(CNN) — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed publicly for the first time on Thursday that the United States has put forward a “serious proposal” to secure the release of Paul Whelan, wrongfully detained from Russia.
US officials have long stressed their commitment to bringing home Whelan, who has been detained in Russia since 2018, but the public disclosure that a deal is on the table marks a notable advance in those efforts.
In a “brief encounterWith Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday, Blinken said he lobbied the Russian foreign minister over Whelan’s detention and the offer.
“The United States has presented a serious proposal. Moscow should accept it,” Blinken said at a news conference after the meeting with Lavrov.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday that this was “not a proposal that the Russians were hearing for the first time today.”
Price declined to elaborate on that proposal, but said it was one “that we have consistently conveyed to you in the past.”
“We have conveyed in some detail, with all the necessary details to the Russian Federation, the proposal that we have put on the table,” Price said at a department briefing. “We’ve done this relentlessly, we’ve done this creatively, looking to do everything we can to see Paul Whelan released.”
Price did not say whether the Russian government had committed to that proposal.
Whelan was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 on espionage charges, something he has vehemently denied. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020.
The United States failed to secure their freedom in a prisoner exchange that brought home another American detainee, Brittney Griner, in December. Multiple US officials said after Griner’s release that the Russians had refused to negotiate a deal for Whelan.
Notably, before Thursday’s engagement, the last time Blinken spoke to Lavrov, and the only other time the two spoke directly since the war in Ukraine began, was at a phone call in july past, when he “lobbied the Kremlin to agree to the important proposal we put forward on the release of Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner.”
CNN reported in January that the US “had direct discussions with Russian officials about” Whelan in the wake of Griner’s release.
Whelan, who called CNN exclusively from his remote penal colony in the hours after Griner’s release, he said he hoped President Joe Biden and his administration “will do everything they can to bring me home, no matter what price they have to pay right now.”
On Thursday, Whelan’s family praised Blinken for making his case in the meeting with Lavrov.
Elizabeth Whelan, Paul Whelan’s sister, told CNN following Blinken’s exchange with Lavrov that “of course we’re pleased to see Paul’s case rise in this way, and we take great comfort in the fact that the secretary of State continues to push for a solution to Paul’s wrongful detention.”
David Whelan who thanked the mention of his brother “in a rare compromise between the Secretary of State and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.”
“It reinforces our feeling that the White House continues to advocate for Paul, even if we don’t always see the activity,” he told CNN.