Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich released in prisoner swap between US and Russia
1 August 2024, 16:48 | Updated: 1 August 2024, 18:04
Journalist Evan Gershkovich has been freed as part of a prisoner swap between the US and Russia, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
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Mr Gershkovich has been released alongside former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-British activist and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva is also be part of the deal agreed by the Biden administration.
It is the biggest prisoner swap between the two nations since the Cold War with the exchange thought to involve 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.
A statement from Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker confirmed Mr Gerskovich's release.
It said: “Evan is free and on his way home. He was released today in a multilateral prisoner exchange that took place in Ankara, Turkey, along with Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, among others.
"We are overwhelmed with relief and elated for Evan and his family, as well as for the others who were released.
"At the same time, we condemn in the strongest terms Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, which orchestrated Evan’s 491-day wrongful imprisonment based on sham accusations and a fake trial as part of an all-out assault on the free press and truth."
It continued: "Unfortunately, many journalists remain unjustly imprisoned in Russia and around the world.
"We would like to thank the U.S. government and numerous governments around the world, with particular gratitude to Germany; global news media organizations standing in solidarity with Evan."
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British activist and journalist who was jailed in April 2023, has also been freed.
Mr Kara-Murza was believed to be one of two British citizens that could have been exchanged after pressure on the Foreign Office from a group of MPs.
Despite the UK not participating in prisoner swaps, it was hoped that Britain had lobbied the US to include him in the deal.
An MP who had been in discussions with the UK government about Mr Kara-Murza had previously 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.
President Joe Biden said the American detainees' "brutal ordeal is over" as he hailed their release a "feat of diplomacy" involving multiple countries and as an "incredible relief" for families involved.
Mr Biden was joined by relatives of the freed Americans as he made his statement at the White House.
The president and the families spoke to the freed prisoners from the Oval Office just minutes before his address, the Democratic leader said.
Read more: Russia could be fuelling far-right riots after Southport killings, ex-MI6 boss warns
The US and its allies were 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."
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."
