Here are some prisoner swaps that freed Americans.
The prospect of the United States exchanging a Russian prisoner for the basketball star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, a former Marine, is reminiscent of the fraught deals Washington orchestrated with Moscow and its allies during and after the Cold War.

Perhaps the most dramatic exchange was the 1962 swap on a fog-shrouded bridge between East Germany and West Berlin that became the stuff of Hollywood. The United States exchanged Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy, for Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot of a U‐2 spy plane that shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier. More than 50 years later, the trade was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 film, “Bridge of Spies.”

Now, experts say a prisoner exchange may be the only path to freedom for Mr. Whelan and Ms. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who plays for the Phoenix Mercury.