The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history today (Aug. 1), with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan in a multinational deal that set some two dozen people free, according to officials in Turkey, where the exchange took place.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the release of its reporter. Also released in the deal were several Russians held in the U.S. and Europe, according to the Journal and other news outlets.
The trade followed years of secretive back-channel negotiations despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Both Gershkovich and Whelan had been convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. government considered baseless.
In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged news reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would also be released as part of the deal.
Capus said the broadcaster welcomed ’’news of Alsu’s imminent release and are grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia.” Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.
The deal was the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Grinerback to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug-trafficking conspiracy.
President Joe Biden had placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”
Russia has long been interested in getting back Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.
Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovichthat Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.
Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.
U.S. officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s administration had not made public any possible deals since then.
Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the U.S. have also said were false and trumped up, and he was serving a 16-year prison sentence.
Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Reed and Griner.
Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia, and Lee from Mongolia. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report. The Free Speech Center also contributed.
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