The biggest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War era took place earlier on Thursday, with 24 people released in total, the US has confirmed.

The White House said 16 prisoners had been freed and were on their way back to Europe and the US. Among them is Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

In return, eight Russian prisoners have been released from prisons in the US, Norway, Germany, Poland and Slovenia, including individuals accused of intelligence activities. The children of two of the prisoners also returned to Russia.

The swap took place on the runway at Ankara airport earlier on Thursday.

President Joe Biden has confirmed US Marine veteran Paul Whelan, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Russian-British activist Vladimir Kara-Murza – who has a US green card – are also on their way back to the US.

The deal had been more than 18 months in the making and appears to have hinged on Moscow’s demand for the return of Vadim Krasikov.

He was serving a life sentence in Germany for carrying out an assassination in a Berlin park, and is now back in Russia.

Senior US administration officials described him as a “bad dude” and said he was “certainly the biggest fish the Russians wanted back”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, along with a guard of honour, met the returning Russians at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.

Earlier prisoner swap discussions had included jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but the offer collapsed when he died in February.

His widow Yulia welcomed the swap, describing it as a “joy”.

“Every released political prisoner is a huge victory and a reason to celebrate,” she said in a post on X.

“No one should be held hostage by Putin, subjected to torture, or left to die in his prisons.”

The view in the White House is that this deal is the most complex exchange in US and Russian history.

Mr Biden called it a “feat of diplomacy”, adding that many countries had “joined difficult, complex negotiations at my request and I personally thank them”.

He added that those released had been convicted in “show trials” and sentenced to “long prison terms with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever”.

Mr Biden joined relatives of the three Americans and Kara-Murza on a call from the Oval Office after the exchange was completed.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he welcomed the releases, particularly of Kara-Murza and Whelan, who hold British citizenship.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said in a statement that 13 prisoners had been pardoned in order to secure the return of Russians held in prisons abroad.

There was no explanation as to why the names of two of the released Germans, Patrick Schobel and Herman Moyzhes, were not included in the list of pardons.

German citizen Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death in Belarus before being pardoned by the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko earlier this week, has also been released.

Others included in the deal are Russian political prisoners Ilya Yashin and Oleg Orlov.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted the swap was “the right decision, and if you had any doubts, you will lose them after talking to those who are now free”.

“Many of the prisoners feared for their health and even their lives,” he added after meeting with some prisoners on their arrival at Cologne Bonn Airport.

Earlier, the Turkish presidency said prisoners from both sides of the deal were taken off aircraft at Ankara airport, moved to secure locations under the supervision of Turkish security officials and put on planes for their respective destination countries.

It said 26 individuals were involved in the exchange. That figure included two children, who a US official confirmed returned to Russia with their parents Artyom Dultsev and Anna Dultseva – a Russian couple convicted of spying in Slovenia who are part of the exchange.

The exchange comes after days of speculation about a major swap between various countries, which increased after several dissidents and journalists jailed in Russia were moved from their prison cells to unknown locations.

Although secret prison transfers are common in Russia, the multiple disappearances of well-known prisoners was unusual.

The last high-profile prisoner swap took place in December 2022, when US basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been held in an American prison for 12 years.

The last comparable one occurred in Vienna in 2010, when 10 Russian spies held in the US were swapped for four alleged double agents held in Russia.

One of them was Sergei Skripal, a former military intelligence officer, later poisoned by nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018.

Tensions between Moscow and the West have been high in recent years, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.