We’ll start by saying once again that Evan Gershkovich should never have been available for a prisoner swap. The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested in Russia in March 2023 and accused of espionage, the first American journalist accused of spying in Russia since the Cold War. After a hasty and secret trial, he was found guilty last month and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security prison. Russia never publicly shared any evidence that Gershkovich was doing anything other than working as a newspaper reporter.
Journalism, as we and many others have said during Gershkovich’s imprisonment, is not a crime.
That said, it is great news that the 2014 Bowdoin College graduate is heading home. He was freed Thursday along with Paul Whalen, a former Marine and corporate security executive, who has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the U.S. government. The trio were released Thursday in Turkey. They were part of a multi-country prisoner swap that was negotiated among numerous countries.
“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same,” Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker said in a staff email. “This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family.”
The swap was the largest negotiated between Russia and the West in decades. Russia will release 16 prisoners, including political dissidents, in exchange for eight prisoners, including accused intelligence operatives and the man convicted of killing a former Chechen rebel in Germany. The deal had been in negotiations for months and involved seven countries, according to the New York Times. Beyond the U.S. and Russia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey were also involved in the negotiations and freeing of prisoners.
As the AP noted: “ … 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.”
This is an unfair and unpleasant reality. Such swaps reward hostage taking by despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. However, it is unreasonable to allow innocent Americans like Gershkovich, Whalen, and Kurmasheva to languish in Russian prisons. So such swaps have become a means to secure the freedom of people falsely accused of crimes like spying in Russia.
“The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia — including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country. Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.
“This is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world whom you can trust and depend upon. Our alliances make Americans safer,” he added.
Evan Gershkovich should not have been a prisoner. However, ending his detention, and that of others falsely accused of crimes and detained in Russia, was rightly a top diplomatic priority for the U.S. and other western countries.
Securing the release of Gershkovich, Whalen, Kurmasheva, and others is indeed a significant diplomatic achievement. We welcome them home.
