MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. Russian national Roman Seleznev, who served a prison sentence in Butner, North Carolina, and returned home as a result of the prisoner swap, told Izvestia about his emotions when he saw Russian President Vladimir Putin at the airplane ramp.

"When we arrived, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] personally shook my hand. I almost fainted when I got off the plane. We were told nothing, who was meeting us, what was going on. <...> I came out, staggering, I think, I see all this - the red carpet, the National Guard, and our president standing there, greeting us. I was in shock, of course," Seleznev told the Izvestia newspaper.

According to Seleznev, the fact that he was personally greeted by the president meant a lot to him. "It meant a lot to me. Probably the fact that the president is a human being, and somehow he knows all his own who are in trouble, that the motherland does not abandon them," Seleznev pointed out.

"He (Russian President Vladimir Putin - TASS) is a great man," the Russian citizen concluded.

Seleznev was detained by US intelligence officers on July 5, 2014 at the international airport of Male, the capital of the Republic of Maldives. On the same day, he was taken to the island of Guam, which is an unincorporated territory of the United States. The Guam District Court denied the Russian's release and ordered his deportation to Seattle, Washington. In August 2016, a jury in Seattle found Seleznev guilty of cyber fraud on 38 of 40 counts. He was accused of hacking into the databases of about 200 US companies. On April 21, 2017, the Russian national was sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay $170 million in restitution.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reported earlier that eight Russian nationals, detained or convicted in several NATO countries, as well as two minors, had returned home following a prisoner swap conducted at Ankara’s airport. One of those swapped was Russian citizen Vadim Krasikov, who had been serving a life sentence in Germany. The Russians were exchanged for a group of individuals who acted in the interests of other countries.

According to US President Joe Biden, Russia released 16 people as part of the prisoner swap, including former US Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, convicted of espionage in Russia.