Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and US Marine Paul Whelan are expected to be released from Russian jail today in a high-stakes prisoner swap negotiated between the Kremlin and Washington.
The Kremlin is also expected to release dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, who has been a vocal detractor of Russian president and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin. Kara-Murza was given a 25-year sentence in April 2023 on charges including treason, after he came out against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Also reportedly on the list of those who may be released: anti-war artist and writer Aleksandra Skochilenko, who was convicted last fall of “disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces,” dissident politician Ilya Yashin, a pair of former staffers for late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and Russian-German dual citizen Kevin Lik, who, at 19, remains the youngest person ever to be convicted of treason in Russia.
In all, there are 24 prisoners involved in the trade, according to reports. Among the Russians expected to be released: FSB Col. Vadim Krasikov, a hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of Chechen military commander Zelimkhan Sultanovich Khangoshvili. The swap is expected to take place in Turkey, after the country’s National Intelligence Agency said Thursday in a statement that an “exchange operation will take place today under the coordination of our organization. Our organization has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period.”
The swap comes less than two weeks after Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges on July 19, following a trial widely denounced as a sham.
The same day, US President Joe Biden issued a public statement decrying Gershkovich’s wrongful detention, saying, “Journalism is not a crime.”
Gershkovich, Biden went on, was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”
The president said he and his administration would continue “pushing hard” for Gershkovich’s release, and that there was “no higher priority” for him than securing freedom for Gershkovich, Whelan, “and all Americans… held hostage abroad.”
Paul Whelan, a Michigan resident who served in the US Marine Corps from 2003 to 2008 and worked in corporate security, was visiting Russia in 2018 when he was arrested in a Moscow hotel, also on espionage charges. Exactly a month before Biden’s open letter, Whelan’s brother David, a law librarian who has been very public in agitating for his sibling’s release, sent out an email to supporters and members of the press, in which he did not seem optimistic about the future.
“Paul has been held hostage for 2,000 days by the Russian government,” David wrote. “He has completed one-third of his 16 year sentence. The US government does not seem any further ahead than in those hopeful days of December 2022, when they were immediately going to redouble their efforts… False promises. False hopes.”
On Wednesday, David Whelan published an email he had received from a Russian correspondent at Radio Free Europe, which said, “Hi David, How are you? I am in Germany… But I wrote today about Paul. The Russian Press writes that Paul is not in the colony in Mordovia. When was the last time Paul called? What did you say? What do you think, Maybe he was taken away for a prisoner exchange between the USA and Russia?”
Seeming to confirm the news, Reuters cited a lawyer for Whelan, who said he had been moved from the facility. The wire service also reported that various dissidents and other convicts in Russia had “disappeared” in recent days, leading to speculation of an impending prisoner swap.
At the same time, US Department of State Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Wednesday, “I don’t want to speculate… What I can say is that the United States continues to be focused on working around the clock to work to get our wrongfully detained American citizens home.”
The chances of a deal seemed scant up until recently. In 2018, speaking to an FSB gathering in Russia, Putin said the country’s security services had stopped supposed spying efforts by 53 Russian officials and 386 foreign agents over the preceding two years.
“The law of retaliation states, ‘An eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth,’” Putin told the attendees. “However, he said, “[W]e will not arrest innocent people simply to exchange them for someone else later on.”
The last prisoner swap between Russia and the US came in 2022, when US basketball star Brittney Griner was traded for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called Merchant of Death, who was serving 25 years in an American prison after a 2011 conviction on four felony counts. Griner was serving nine years on drug charges after being caught at a Moscow airport with less than a gram of hash oil in two vape cartridges found in her luggage.
A former Russian intelligence officer who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity said, “This swap is the largest swap since the 60s. It’s a clear sign of ongoing Cold War 2.0. At the same time, it’s a good sign, the first step to a political detente and a potential peace deal over Ukraine.”
On Wednesday, a memo sent to staff by Wall Street Journal chief digital editor Grainne McCarthy thanked employees for keeping Gerskovich’s name in the news during the “70 long weeks” he had been detained, but did not raise the specter of an impending prisoner swap.
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