WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Russia completed a 24-person prisoner swap on Thursday, the largest in post-Soviet history, with Moscow releasing Wall Street Journal reporter 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 Journal confirmed that Gershkovich had been freed.
It’s the latest exchange between Washington and Moscow in the past two years, following a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout.
Russia meanwhile secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West.
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Biden calls exchange a ‘feat of diplomacy’
President Joe Biden praised the negotiations that brought four Americans home from Russian detention Thursday as a “feat of diplomacy.”
In a White House statement, Biden cited the “unimaginable suffering and uncertainty” surrounding the prisoners’ time in Russian custody.
“Today, their agony is over,” Biden said.
Biden thanked allies including Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey for their assistance.
Biden said his administration had brought home more than 70 Americans who had been wrongfully detained or otherwise held hostage. “I have no higher priority as President than bringing those Americans home,” he wrote.
Turkey’s intelligence chief facilitated talks between the US and Russia, per Turkish official
A Turkish security official said Turkey’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, personally facilitated talks between his U.S. and Russian counterparts for the prisoner swap.
The talks took place in Istanbul and Ankara, the official said.
According to the official, Washington and Moscow reached out to Turkey requesting its assistance. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then instructed Kalin to “do whatever is necessary” to make the deal happen, according to the official, who provided the information on customary condition of anonymity.
Sen Graham says exchange is ‘reinforcing bad behavior’
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he was glad that the U.S. citizens would get to go home, but added that the exchange was “just reinforcing bad behavior.”
Graham, who is known as a hawk on foreign policy, suggested that the next time an American is imprisoned under similar circumstances, the U.S. should “just pound the hell out of Russia.”
The Wall Street Journal celebrates Gershkovich’s release
Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker says Gershkovich has walked free from a Russian plane and will soon board a flight home to the U.S.
“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same,” Tucker wrote in a note to the staff obtained by the AP. “This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for The Wall Street Journal.”
Wall Street Journal reporters broke into applause after his release was announced in the New York newsroom. Gershkovich’s photo was projected onto a screen along with #IStandWithEvan, the hashtag supporters around the world used to call for his freedom.
The trade
The sprawling deal, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries, was heralded by President Joe Biden as a diplomatic achievement in the final months of his administration. But the release of Americans has come at a price: Russia has secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the U.S. considers bogus.
The Wall Street Journal confirms Gershkovich’s release
The Journal confirmed the release, with top editor Emma Tucker saying in a staff email: “I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same.”
Russia extended Gershkovich’s detention several times
In February, a Moscow court ruled to keep him in custody pending his trial.
In March, the court ordered him to remain in jail on espionage charges until at least late June. The 32-year-old had spent nearly a year behind bars by then.
In April, the court rejected an appeal that sought to end his pretrial detention.
His arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg rattled journalists in Russia, where authorities have not detailed what, if any, evidence they have to support the espionage charges.
Gershkovich appeared in Russian court more than a dozen times
Since his detention, Gershkovich has appeared more than a dozen times in Russian courtrooms — first in Moscow, where he was held at the notorious Lefortovo Prison, and then at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.
His pretrial appearances became almost formulaic, as he was led in handcuffs over and over from a prison van to a glass defendant’s cage. They offered his family and friends both a painful reminder of his detention but also a chance to lay eyes on him.
“It’s always a mixed feeling. I’m happy to see him and that he’s doing well, but it’s a reminder that he is not with us. We want him at home,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told The Associated Press in an interview in March.
Although Gershkovich was often seen smiling in the brief appearances, friends and family said he found it hard to face a wall of cameras pointed at him as if he were an animal in a zoo.
As his trial started behind closed doors on June 26, Gershkovich stood in the defendants cage with a shaved head as the media were allowed briefly into the court.
Russia has detained many other journalists
The arrest of Gershkovich — the first U.S. journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War — came as a shock, even though Russia had enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“He was accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry. There was nothing to suggest that this was going to happen,” said Emma Tucker, The Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief in an interview in March.
Since the invasion, Russian authorities have detained several U.S. nationals and other Westerners, and Gershkovich knew the risks, said Washington Post correspondent and friend Francesca Ebel.
After his arrest, he knew “right from the very start that this was going to take a long time,” she said.
Long before his arrest, Gershkovich lamented that many friends in Russia were being locked up
In early 2022, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich wrote on social media that “reporting on Russia is now also a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.”
A year later, he was the one locked up — arrested in March 2023 on charges of spying that his employer and the U.S. government have denounced as fabricated. Last month, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
WSJ reporter freed in massive US-Russia prisoner swap
The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, 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.
Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the U.S. government considered baseless.
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.
The sprawling deal, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries.
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 Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.
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