Washington has successfully negotiated two separate prisoner swaps with the Kremlin since Whelan was detained, and neither has included him.

“I know the U.S. [has] all sorts of proposals, but it’s not what the Russians want,” Whelan told the BBC in an interview published Wednesday. “They go back and forth, like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.”

He called the situation “extremely stressful,” adding that he feels the U.S. has “basically abandoned me here.”

[Fourteen thousand Americans in Afghanistan understand the feeling. Biden felt it was more important to get a WNBA star out of Russia than it was to free Whelan, so much so that Biden coughed up the notorious merchant of death Viktor Bout. Trump refused to trade Bout at all, but Biden did, and not for Whelan. Small wonder he feels “abandoned” now. — Ed]