Jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich due to be released in prisoner swap between US and Russia
1 August 2024, 13:06 | Updated: 1 August 2024, 15:00
The jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is due to be released as part of a prisoner swap between the US and Russia.
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The journalist is due to be freed along with former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva will be released under the deal agreed by the Biden administration, a senior US official confirmed.
It the biggest prisoner swap between the two nations since the Cold War with the exchange expected to involved 24 prisoners held in Russia, the US, Germany and three other Western countries.
Mr Gershkovich and Mr Whelan were jailed after being charged with espionage -an offence punishable with up to 20 years in prison - which they both and the US deny.
They are currently being transported to destinations outside of Russia following years of talks to release the pair.
The US and its allies are set to return eight prisoners they hold to Russia, according to reports.
One of them is Vadim Krasikov who was identified by German officials as a colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence service.
He is serving a life sentence for the murder of a Kremlin opponent in a Berlin Park in 2019.
Mr Gershkovich was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, about 2,000 kilometers east of Moscow.
In an interview with American reporter Tucker Carlson in February, Russian president Vladmir Putin reiterated his view that Mr Gershkovich was a spy.
He said: "You know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information and does that in conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage.
"He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly. Maybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative."
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When asked at the time if he would consider releasing the journalist, Mr Putin did not definitively rule it out but made the prospect sound unlikely unless the US took"reciprocal" steps.
"We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them," Putin said.
"We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal step."
The prisoner swap could include Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British activist and journalist who was jailed in April 2023, the Telegraph reports.
Mr Kara-Murza is believed to be one of two British citizens that could be exchanged after pressure on the Foreign Office from a group of MPs.
Despite the UK not participating in prisoner swaps, it is hoped that Britain has lobbied the US to include him in the deal.
An MP who had been in discussions with the UK government about Mr Kara-Murza said: “The US has had Kara-Murza on their radar, but there are no guarantees.
"The Russians are renowned for driving a very hard bargain.”
Others prisoners potentially involved in the exchange are Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin and veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov.
