Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was released from Russian captivity on Thursday as part of the largest prisoner swap between Russia and Western nations in decades. Gershkovich had been imprisoned for nearly 500 days and was recently sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony.
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on assignment in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Russian authorities claimed he was obtaining information for the CIA, though the allegations against Gershkovich are widely assumed to be false and have been denied strenuously by the Journal.
Gershkovich was released around 11:20 a.m. Eastern time at an airport in Ankara, Turkey. Several other prisoners were also released, including Russia-critical journalists Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza, and American former Marine Paul Whelan, who had been imprisoned since 2018. Russian hit man Vadim Krasikov, who was imprisoned in Germany after receiving a life sentence for killing a Chechen rebel, was released back to Russia as part of the deal.
In total, the swap involved two dozen prisoners from at least six countries, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The exchange is emblematic of a new era of state-sponsored hostage-taking by autocratic governments seeking leverage over rivals. It was negotiated as tensions soared between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine,” the Journal reported on Thursday. “It also offers sobering evidence of the asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia in this new, piratical order. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin can order foreigners plucked from restaurants and hotels and given lengthy prison sentences on spurious charges—something an American leader can’t do.”
While this is the largest prisoner swap the U.S. has engaged in in recent years to free citizens imprisoned in Russia, it isn’t its first. In December 2022, WNBA player Brittney Griner was released in a swap for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout after being held for almost nine months on drug charges. While securing the release of Griner, Gershkovich, and other American citizens from wrongful Russian captivity is vital, it may also work to incentivize Russian authorities to continue jailing Americans on false charges.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy,” President Joe Biden said shortly after Thursday’s prisoner swap. “Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over….I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family.”
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