A Michigan family is celebrating after one of their own was released from a Russian prison last week, following more than five years of detainment.

Novi native Paul Whelan was arrested in Russia in 2018. 

He had been serving a 16-year prison sentence for espionage, charges both he and the U.S. government say are bogus. 

Whelan was part of a multi-national prisoner exchange with Russia involving roughly two dozen people. 

He was the first person to disembark from the plane that brought the detainees back to the U.S., where Whelan was greeted in-person by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Whelan’s twin brother, David Whelan, told WDET in a phone interview that their family can finally exhale again. 

Listen: Brother of Novi man released from Russian prison says family can ‘finally exhale’

The following interview was edited for clarity.

David Whelan: We’re obviously overjoyed that he is home. There was messaging from the U.S. government sort of letting us know that something might happen, that it could be positive news. But it also could be news that we wouldn’t be happy about. So, I think up until I read the White House statement after Paul had gotten on a plane, that the detainees were on their way home, I didn’t really believe that it had happened. 

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: And you had no idea up until that point that this was going to go through? 

DW: Right. I think we were starting to sense something in the last few days. This didn’t come from the U.S. government. I’ve been watching Russian media for over five years. And you can see things starting to happen. We saw that it was becoming a very large, complicated sort of an activity or event. And I think the more complexity you have, the more likelihood that there is something that could fall apart or that someone might get cold feet, that something doesn’t work the way you expect. Particularly since Paul had not come home twice already, he had been left behind when Trevor Reed came home and he was left behind when Brittney Griner came home. And that’s not to suggest that he could have come home. I’m just saying that he didn’t come home. So I think we were all a little bit cautious about getting our hopes up too high that he would come home the third time.  

QK: Over the last few months you said it seemed like there was little hope that Paul could be freed, that the U.S. had kind of pulled all the levers it possibly could to try to make that happen without anything working. Do you have any sense as to what actually changed now so this has been able to come to fruition? 

DW: I think that this was a very slow-bubbling pot. And it has probably been on a burner for 12 months, 18 months. We have seen some of the names that were exchanged in the media during that time. So I think it’s possible that this thing has just been something that took a long time, a lot of relationship-building, a lot of persuasion. It might have taken changes in dynamics in other countries with elections or with political changes. So I think it was just one of those things that until it was ready, it wasn’t ready, when finally certain things clicked into place. And that was part of our concern, that if those things became un-clicked, that it might fall apart. I think that’s the difficulty for any families in this sort of situation. There are so many unknowns and all of them are out of your control. All of these things that occurred with this exchange, when you consider the number of Russian political prisoners who were coming out, some of whom may not have wanted to come out of Russia, as well as the others who were being exchanged, you start to realize how complicated these things can get. 

QK: So much has changed, politically and otherwise, since Paul was first taken into custody. Does he have to kind of rebuild his life from scratch now back in the U.S.? 

DW: In a sense, yes. And in a sense, no. Fortunately our other brother has done a remarkable job of maintaining Paul’s financial situation, dealing with taxes, dealing with loans or other debts that he had, making sure money was in his bank account, that sort of thing. I think that Paul is going to have to come back and rebuild a lot of his life. He’s going to have to find a place to live, he’ll need to get a job. He’ll have to deal with all the relationships, some people who were friendly to him when he was in America but not when he was in a Russian prison. But at least he will have a financial starting point that I think a lot of prisoners when they come back find that they don’t have. We’ve read about prisoners in Russia who are sentenced to treason, many years of detention, then someone gets a power of attorney and wipes out their bank accounts.  

And I think even when I read the White House statement, I didn’t 100% believe it. I almost needed to see a proof-of-life photo of Paul in a place that I know is in America, for me to really, truly believe it. Obviously, to see him in person would be that too. But you get to the point where you resign yourself to the fact that there is this uncertainty, a solution may or may not appear at any time. And frankly, if the news had been bad, I really don’t know what the U.S. government would have done next. Because this really was cleaning out every cupboard and cleaning out every coin under the cushion. I don’t think that there any more concessions the U.S. could have made. So, I think for the next person who gets arrested by Russia, it’s gonna be very, very difficult. 

QK: What advice might you have for U.S. officials who are dealing with families of hostages such as Paul? 

DW: The U.S. government, frankly, has to trust the family and I think that’s been one of the difficulties with our experiences. Sometimes they’re willing to trust us with a little bit of information. And then sometimes they see us as, maybe not the enemy, but certainly not as an ally. I think we really experienced it in the last three or four months of Paul’s detention. We noticed that the National Security Advisors’ office had really just thrown up walls and the information flow that we had been accustomed to — it wasn’t top secret stuff, it was just information that helped us get situational awareness — had suddenly stopped. I think part of it is because internally the U.S. government has concerns about leaks and different departments feel differently about how much to share with media. So I think we were impacted by decisions that were made by certain departments like the National Security Advisors’ office. 

QK: To bring it back to Paul, do you have any sense of what your family is planning when he actually returns to your home? Is there gonna be a big party, or will you kind of try to ease him back into life in the U.S.? 

DW: No, not really. We’ve discussed some possible outcomes. I think we are all very much focused on Paul having agency at this point and making his own choices about where he lives, who he interacts with, just building relationships. He was betrayed by a very close friend in Russia five-and-a-half years ago and has seen some of his other friends and colleagues peel-off over time. And I think that it will be a while for him to build trust and relationships and rapport again, even with family members.