(WASHINGTON) – The United States and Russia completed their largest prisoner exchange in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan , in a multinational agreement that freed around two dozen people. according to officials in Türkiye, where the exchange took place.
The Journal confirmed the release, with editor Emma Tucker saying in a staff email, “I can’t even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief this news brings, and I know you will all feel the same.”
The trade followed years of secret negotiations through back channels, despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
See more information: The fight to free Evan Gershkovich
The sweeping agreement is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the US over the past two years, but the first to require significant concessions from other countries. But the release of the Americans came at a price: Russia guaranteed the freedom of its own citizens convicted of serious crimes in the West, exchanging them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system, on charges that the US considers false.
The White House did not immediately release any details about the deal.
In a statement published online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty president and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.
Capus said the network welcomed “the news of Alsosu’s imminent release and is grateful to the American government and everyone who worked tirelessly to end Russia’s unfair treatment of her.” Kurmasheva, who has dual Russian and American citizenship, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, charges that her family and her employer rejected.
The deal would be the last exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a trade in December 2022 that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year by Navy veteran Trevor. Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy.
President Joe Biden put securing the release of Americans wrongfully detained abroad at the top of his foreign policy agenda during the six months before leaving office. In his Oval Office address to the American people, discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said: “We are also working day and night to bring home Americans who are unjustly detained across the world. world”.
Russia also recovered Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of murdering a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on orders from Moscow’s security services, according to a Turkish government statement.
For weeks, speculation had mounted that a trade was near due to a confluence of unusual developments, including an initially quick trial and conviction of Gershkovich, which Washington dismissed as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison.
Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or because of their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been transferred from prison to unknown locations.
See more information: Brittney Griner: What I Endured in a Russian Prison
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Authorities alleged, without offering any proof, that he was collecting classified information for the United States. The son of Soviet émigrés who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work at The Moscow Times before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
He has had more than a dozen closed hearings on whether to extend his pre-trial detention or appeal his release. He was brought into court in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.
American officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich, which was rejected by Russia, and the Democratic Biden administration has not made public any possible deals since then.
Gershkovich was found to be unfairly detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted on espionage charges, which he and the US also said were false and fabricated, and is serving a 16-year prison sentence.
Whelan has been excluded from previous high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Reed and Griner.
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Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia, and Lee from Mongolia. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
