Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and US Marine Paul Whelan are expected to be released today
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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 whopping 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.
On July 19, following a trial widely denounced as a sham, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges.
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.
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.
