The Wall Street Journal reporter was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges
US journalist Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned in Russia on spying charges, is set to be released by Moscow as part of a prisoner exchange, Fox News reported on Wednesday.
Fox anchor Trace Gallagher, citing the network’s chief national security correspondent at the Pentagon, Jennifer Griffin, said that Gershkovich, a 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter, “is slated to come back to the United States” on Thursday. He would not say who else may be involved in the potential exchange.
The report comes as a plane used in the 2022 exchange of businessman Viktor Bout and American basketballer Brittney Griner was spotted flying from Moscow to Kaliningrad, according to Flightradar24, a tracking website.
Meanwhile, the Slovenian outlet N1 issued a report about a looming “larger exchange of prisoners” to take place soon between Russia, the US, Germany and Belarus. It claimed that it could involve the Russian couple Artem and Anna Dulcevs, accused of espionage by Slovenia.
Gershkovich, a son of Soviet emigres, had built a career focused largely on Russia and Eastern Europe. He was detained in March 2023 in Ekaterinburg, central Russia and charged with espionage. Russian authorities have said he tried to collect classified information on a Russian defense enterprise, and that he had been “caught red-handed.”
The journalist and his paper have vehemently denied charges, with the US State Department declaring him “wrongfully detained.” Last month, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a closed-door trial.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed last year in an interview with conservative US journalist Tucker Carlson that Washington and Moscow were in contact about a possible prisoner swap, calling the dialogue “not easy”. The Kremlin, however, has consistently refrained from releasing details of such talks, saying that such sensitive matters “love silence.”
Gershkovich became the first American journalist detained on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War, highlighting current geopolitical tensions between Moscow and Washington on numerous issues, including the Ukraine conflict. The last major prisoner swap took place in December 2022, with the US releasing Russian businessman Viktor Bout in exchange for Brittney Griner, a basketball player convicted on drug charges in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Russia still has another American citizen in custody – Paul Whelan, a former US Marine who was arrested in Moscow in 2018, also on espionage charges. Whelan was arrested after accepting a flash drive that contained classified documents from an undercover officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). In 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian labor prison. Whelan has denied any wrongdoing.
