answer this hostage diplomacy situation and resolve it as quickly as possible. so, i would ask president biden to productively discuss and resolve this issue with his russian counterparts. reporter: yeah, i think that paul whelan believes he s very much a sort of negotiating chip for the russians to return back some russian prisoners that are in american jails. the problem has always been that the russians in american jails are really high-level criminals. one of them is a convicted cocaine smuggler, conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the u.s. the other within is the world s most notorious arms traffickers. u.s. officials i ve spoken to say there s no correlation. paul woulhelan and trevor reed,e other u.s. citizen in a russian jail, are in a different category than the serious criminals russians want exchanged. not a one for one.