Prisoner Swap Latest: US reporter Evan Gershkovich freed in prisoner swamp
WASHINGTON — The United States and Russia on Thursday completed their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, with Moscow freeing a Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that saw the release of about two dozen people, officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place, said.
The newspaper confirmed that Gershkovich had been released.
It is the latest exchange between Washington and Moscow in the past two years, following a December 2022 trade that WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the US in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Meanwhile, Russia has secured the freedom of its own citizens convicted of serious crimes in the West.
Here’s the latest news:
In Februarya Moscow court ruled that he should remain in custody pending trial.
In Marchthe court ordered him to remain in prison until at least the end of June for espionage. The 32-year-old had almost a year behind bars then.
In Aprilthe court dismissed an appeal aimed at ending his pre-trial detention.
His arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg has sparked concern among journalists in Russia. Authorities have not disclosed whether they have evidence to support the espionage allegations.
Since his arrest, Gershkovich has appeared in Russian courts more than a dozen times, first in Moscow, where he was held in the infamous Lefortovo prisonand then at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg.
His appearances for the trial became almost formulaic, as he was repeatedly led in handcuffs from a prison van to a glass cage of a defendant. They offered his family and friends both a painful reminder of his captivity, but also a chance to see him with his own eyes.
“It’s always a mixed feeling. I’m happy to see him and that he’s okay, but it’s a reminder that he’s not here. We want him home,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told The Associated Press in an interview in March.
Although Gershkovich was often seen smiling during his brief appearances, friends and family said he found it difficult to face a wall of cameras trained on him, as if he were an animal in a zoo.
When his trial began behind closed doors on June 26, Gershkovich stood in the defendant’s cage with a shaved head, while the media was briefly allowed into the courtroom.
The arrest of Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War, came as a shock, even as Russia has introduced increasingly repressive free speech laws since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“He was accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry. There was nothing to indicate that this would happen,” Emma Tucker, editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, said in an interview in March.
Since the invasion, Russian authorities have multiple US citizens And other westernersand Gershkovich knew the risks, said Francesca Ebel, a correspondent and friend of the Washington Post.
After his arrest, he “knew from the beginning that this was going to take a long time,” she said.
Early 2022, Evan Gershkovich, Wall Street Journal reporter wrote on social media that “reporting on Russia has now also become a regular habit, where you see people you know locked up for years.”
A year later, he was the one locked up — arrested in March 2023 on espionage charges that his employer and the U.S. government have dismissed as fabricated. Last month, he was convicted and convicted up to 16 years in prison.
The United States and Russia on Thursday completed their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, with Moscow freeing a journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that saw the release of about two dozen people, officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place, said.
Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the US government considered baseless.
The trade followed years of secret negotiations behind closed doors, despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War, after Russian President Vladimir Putin February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The sweeping deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the US over the past two years, but the first to require significant concessions from other countries.
For weeks, there has been speculation that a trade was imminent due to a confluence of unusual developments, including an initially speedy trial and conviction for Gershkovich which Washington considered a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the Ural city of Yekaterinburg.