Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan have been freed in a prisoner exchange.
FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a defendant's cage in a courtroom in Moscow on April 23, 2024. The 32-year-old journalist faces trial Wednesday, June 26, on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government deny.
The sprawling deal is the latest in a series of prisoner swaps negotiated between Russia and the U.S. in the last two years but the first to require significant concessions from other countries. But the release of Americans has come at a price: Russia has secured the freedom of its own nationals convicted of serious crimes in the West by trading them for journalists, dissidents and other Westerners convicted and sentenced in a highly politicized legal system on charges the U.S. considers bogus.
Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
Moscow Prisoner Swap Evan Gershkovich Paul Whelan Wrongfully Detained
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