Russia frees WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan in a major prisoner swap

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Russia on Thursday freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former US Marine Paul Whelan in a massive and high-stakes swap for Russian prisoners, including a convicted hit man.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Gershkovich, Whelan, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist, "are now on their way back to the United States from Russia." He said Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British anti-war activist, was also released.

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"Through the extraordinary efforts of countless people in the State Department and across our government, the United States was able to strike an agreement to secure their freedom," Blinken said in a statement.

The exchange, which took place at an airport in the Turkish capital of Ankara, involved two dozen prisoners and at least six countries, The Wall Street Journal confirmed, adding that the deal followed months of negotiations between the US, Russia, and Germany.

"Evan is free and on his way home," Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.

President Joe Biden hailed the deal as a "feat of diplomacy."

A Russian government plane is seen on the tarmac after landing at Esenboga Airport in Ankara on August 1. REUTERS/Tunahan Turha

"All told, we've negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia — including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country," Biden said in a Thursday statement. "Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty."

"Today, their agony is over," he said.

Eight people were swapped back to Russia. US officials said it marked the largest and most complex prisoner exchange since the Cold War.

As of Thursday, Gershkovich had been in Russian detention for 491 days since his arrest at a steakhouse in Yekaterinburg.

He was charged with espionage and held in pre-trial detention for more than a year, but no evidence to support the prosecution's case has been made public. He was convicted in July.

After enduring unimaginable suffering and uncertainty, the Americans detained in Russia are safe, free, and have begun their journeys back into the arms of their families. pic.twitter.com/1rYNBTt9tJ — President Biden (@POTUS) August 1, 2024

Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, and the US government said the allegation of espionage was ludicrous.

Many analysts said Gershkovich was most likely held to bring about a prison exchange to retrieve detained Russians as part of so-called hostage diplomacy.

Whelan was arrested in Moscow in December 2018, also on espionage charges. He was given a 16-year prison sentence in May 2020.

The Russian FSB released a video showing prisoners from the Russian side being loaded onto a plane bound for Turkey for a prisoner exchange. Among those prisoners are @evangershkovich and German national Rico Krieger. #Belarus #Russia pic.twitter.com/joDFU2w4ze — Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) August 1, 2024

In an interview with the BBC in December, Whelan said he felt "abandoned" by the US after he was left out of an earlier swap.

Speculation around a prisoner swap had intensified in recent days as several imprisoned dissidents were moved from their penal colonies this week, including Kara-Murza, a prominent activist who was serving 25 years in Russia for criticizing the war in Ukraine.

Whelan's lawyer told the Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that she didn't know where Whelan was and that the colony administration hadn't responded to her request.

The Moscow Times on Wednesday also reported that Russia was preparing for the swap, citing a source familiar with the planning.

A Russian government plane after taking off from Esenboga Airport following a prisoner swap in Ankara on August 1. REUTERS/Tunahan Turha

The Russian state outlet RIA Novosti said earlier that it spoke with Gershkovich's lawyer, who couldn't immediately comment on any exchange.

The state-run outlet TASS, meanwhile, said it verified that four Russian prisoners in the US had been removed from the electronic database of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, suggesting a prisoner swap was indeed underway.

TASS said the four prisoners in question were Alexander Vinnik, Vladislav Klyushin, Vadim Konoschenko, and Maxim Marchenko.

Vinnik pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to commit money laundering related to his role in operating a cryptocurrency exchange called BTC-e from 2011 to 2017.

Evan Gershkovich looks out from inside a glass defendants' cage prior to a hearing in Yekaterinburg's Sverdlovsk Regional Court. NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images

Klyushin was sentenced to nine years in prison last year for his role in a $93 million hack-to-trade scheme. Konoschenko was arrested last year after being caught smuggling US-made technologies and ammunition into Russia.

Last month, Marchenko was sentenced to three years in prison for illicitly procuring large quantities of US-made, military-grade microelectronics for Russian entities.

Meanwhile, Germany released Vadim Krasikov, a former Russian intelligence officer who was convicted of murdering a rebel leader in Berlin, as part of the exchange. Krasikov, who was reportedly at the center of the deal, had been serving a life sentence.

Correction: August 1, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the electronic database of prisoners in the US that was checked by Russia's state-run TASS news agency. It cited the Federal Bureau of Prisons, not the FBI.