Two prominent Americans held by Russia — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan — will return to the US as part of a massive, multi-country prisoner swap, the State Department announced Thursday.
That swap will feature the freeing of 16 prisoners including citizens of Germany as well as Russian political prisoners. In exchange, eight Russian prisoners in the US, Germany, Poland, Norway, and Slovenia will also be released.
The swap marks the largest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War, and was the byproduct of years of negotiations. That this — one of the most complicated prisoner swaps in history — happened at all is significant, though it’s unlikely to signal a serious improvement in the relationship between the US and Russia, as the latter’s invasion of Ukraine continues.
“Relations are still at a nadir and will remain so absent any fundamental change in Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Adam Lenton, a Wake Forest University professor who studies Russian politics, told Vox.
Who are Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan? And who are the other noteworthy people being freed?
Gershkovich, who was imprisoned in Russia in 2023 while on a reporting trip, was the first American journalist arrested in the country since the Cold War. At the time, he was detained due to claims that he was aiding the CIA in gathering intelligence about a Russian military equipment manufacturer, allegations he and the US government have strongly denied.
His detention, as Jonathan Guyer explained for Vox at the time, was a significant blow to what little press freedom remained in Russia:
It’s true that Russian authorities have often harassed and surveilled international journalists in the country. But they were generally a somewhat protected class, as compared to Russian journalists, who have faced deadly peril. The assumption was that having some foreign journalists in Russia was necessary should Russia want its correspondents credentialed in the US and Europe. Now, amid Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, the rules are changing …
Whelan, who is a citizen of the US, England, Ireland, and Canada, was accused of espionage in 2018, after going to Moscow for a wedding. He has similarly denied these allegations.
Both men were convicted in closed-door trials and sentenced in 2024 and 2020, respectively, to 16 years in a penal colony. The United States designated both men as “wrongfully detained” — a term the government uses to describe Americans it believes are detained overseas on unfounded charges, and whose release it is actively working to secure.
Others who are being released include:
- Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian dissident and a dual British and Russian citizen who’s known for his vocal critiques of the government. Kara-Muza is a Pulitzer Prize winner for the commentary he’s published on the subject and had previously faced a 25-year sentence for charges of treason.
- Alsu Kurmasheva, a US-Russian journalist accused of spreading false information, had edited a book about Russia’s war on Ukraine and had previously been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison.
The prisoners returned to Russia in exchange include convicted hackers and a convicted hit man, operatives who are known for their ties to the Kremlin. The most prominent among them is Vadim Krasikov — a professional assassin who in 2019 killed a former Chechen insurgent in broad daylight in Berlin while parents and their children watched. As the Wall Street Journal reported in their coverage of their own reporter’s return, Krasikov “was the man the Russian president wanted to bring home.”
Experts note that it’s important to differentiate between the individuals released by Russia and those released by other countries. “Putin wanted to bring home a Russian assassin, one he allegedly knew personally, and other spies, to show people who work in the Russian intelligence services that their government will try to bring them home if they get caught. The US government and its allies wanted to free innocent people being held hostage in Russian prisons,” Brian Taylor, a Syracuse political scientist who specializes in the study of Russian politics, told Vox.
The scale of the prisoner swap is notable and ensures that a number of journalists and political activists are able to secure their freedom following years of imprisonment.
“Today is a joyous day for the safe return of our colleague Evan Gershkovich, who left a Russian aircraft moments ago in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, as part of a prisoner swap with Russia,” Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
“The bogus case against him represented many significant things. A blow against press freedom. A warning to foreign journalists covering the Kremlin. A new tension in America’s relationship with Russia,” she added. “But at the center of it all was Evan, our 32-year-old Moscow correspondent from New Jersey, who likes to cook and supports Arsenal Football Club, and who loved living in and reporting on Russia.”
Russia’s willingness to take individuals including Gershkovich, Kara-Murza, and Kurmasheva prisoner underscores the oppressive approach the country has increasingly taken to the press and political dissent under President Vladimir Putin. As Vox’s Ellen Ioanes reported, the Kremlin has backed “draconian laws against what it refers to as fake news and against disparaging the war effort,” all of which are intended to silence critics.
And while US lawmakers lauded the exchange, they also noted that taking hostages (including potentially Gershkovich) was a troubling tactic Russia utilized to gain political leverage and facilitate the release of Russians detained overseas.
“These arrests have been examples of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cynical ‘hostage diplomacy,’ where he detains foreign nationals to use as leverage against their home governments in an assault on the rules-based international order,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said in a statement.
As the Wall Street Journal explained, the US has increasingly had to grapple with that reality and the ethical dilemma posed by freeing convicted Russians in exchange for Americans it considers wrongfully detained:
To respond to Putin and other hostage-taking autocrats, the State Department staffed an entire office of roughly two dozen personnel, led by a former Green Beret who jetted around Europe and the Middle East to explore prisoner trades that might free Gershkovich and others.
The prisoner swap also signals that the two countries still have some diplomatic channels, though it does little to improve the hostility between the nations as Russia continues its war with Ukraine, which the US has staunchly opposed.