The U.S and Russia on Thursday carried out their biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War ended, with Moscow releasing Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich along with Russian dissidents in a multinational deal that saw 26 people released.
The development happened after years of clandestine negotiations even as relations between Washington and Moscow dipped to their lowest point since Russia carried out a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022.
Russian-US journalist Alsu Kurmasheva with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir Serviand former U.S. marine Paul Whelan were also a part of the tradeoff
In return, Moscow secured the release of Vadim Krasikov, 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 forces.
For weeks, speculation was rife that a swap was imminent because of a spate of irregular developments, including a speedy quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.
In recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine or over their work with the deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.
Journalists Gershkovich was arrested on 29 March, 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities randomly claimed that he was gathering secret information for Washington.
The son of Soviet emigres, he moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the WSJ in 2022.
He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He appeared handcuffed in handcuffs in the defendants’ cage, sometimes smiling for the many cameras.
U.S officials offered to swap Gershkovich last year, but Russia refused.
Turcia coordonează la Ankara un schimb de 26 de deţinuţi între Rusia şi Occident
