RUSSIA has freed Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan as part of an extensive prisoner swap between Moscow and the West, US President Joe Biden has confirmed.
“Today, three American citizens and one American green-card holder who were unjustly imprisoned in Russia are finally coming home: Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, and Vladimir Kara-Murza,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy.”
The West obtained the release of 16 people from Russia, including five Germans and seven Russian political prisoners, according to the United States statement.
Biden later confirmed that the released prisoners had made it from Russia to Turkey and would soon be on their way to the US. “The families and I were able to speak to them on the telephone from the Oval Office,” he said separately.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) welcomed the release of Gershkovich after he was handed to US authorities in the Turkish capital Ankara.
“We are overwhelmed with relief and elated for Evan and his family,” WSJ publisher Almar Latour and editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement. “Unfortunately many journalists remain unjustly imprisoned in Russia and around the world.”
Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 and sentenced to 16 years in jail last month on spying charges. Whelan was detained in 2020 on espionage charges, as well. The US has deemed both prisoners “wrongfully detained”.
The deal was mediated by Turkey. “Our organisation has undertaken a major mediation role in this exchange operation, which is the most comprehensive of the recent period,” the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) said earlier in a statement.
Security sources said the deal involved 26 prisoners overall. Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said the operation was “a very extensive and complicated prisoner swap” involving several countries and a large number of prisoners. “That’s why it has been dealt [with] very delicately and carefully,” Koseoglu said.
