On Christmas Eve, Paul Whelan called reporters at CNN, the Detroit News, the BBC, and WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. from a remote labor camp in Mordovia, Russia. “I feel alone,” he told the WTOP reporter. “I feel I’ve been left behind.” 

The fifty-three-year-old Huron High grad was arrested for espionage in 2018 and is serving a sixteen-year sentence. His Russian lawyer said he was set up, and the U.S. government has determined that he is “wrongfully detained.” But he’s twice been passed over in prisoner exchanges, first for WNBA star Brittney Griner and then for former Marine Trevor Reed.

Now, Whelan told the Detroit News’s Melissa Nann Burke, he was concerned that the Biden administration cared more about another Russian hostage, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and may “leave me here a third time.”

His twin brother, David, emails that Paul’s calls took the family by surprise. “They are almost certainly infractions of prison rules,” he writes, and “might result in him being put in solitary confinement or having his prison sentence lengthened.” Without “second-guessing what Paul is feeling,” he suggests that his brother’s “perspective is colored by nonstop Kremlin propaganda within the prison, people around him that do not champion his freedom, [and] living in a nation and environment hostile to his existence.”

Whelan was assaulted by another prisoner at the end of November, and “reported to our parents and to consular staff that a deputy warden is attempting to shake him down for protection money and to entrap him in prohibited speech or actions,” David adds. “We have seen U.S. spokespeople talk about the U.S. working with third-party nations to find a concession, which suggests the U.S. does not have anything within its power to offer” to buy his brother’s freedom. “Unfortunately, I think the White House is currently doing all it can, if a bit more slowly than we would like.” 

At this point, “Paul’s case does not need more media and direct communication with the U.S. government,” David says. “The most helpful thing is to write to him and tell him he’s not forgotten and to tell him about the mundane and routine life in a free country. The mailing address is in the U.S., care of the State Department. American Citizen Services/PNW, Consular Section, 5430 Moscow Place, Department of State, Washington, DC 20521-5430.”