Russia has released Ivan Gershkovich, an American journalist, and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, as part of a prisoner swap between several countries, according to news agency Bloomberg.
Gershkovitch, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested in March 2023 on charges of espionage, which she and the US government vehemently denied. She was subsequently sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison.
The Wall Street Journal said in a statement that he was facing “a false and baseless accusation” based on “an orchestrated and transparent lie.” President Joe Biden called Gershkovic’s detention “completely unlawful.”
Whelan, a former Marine who was working as a corporate security executive, was detained in 2018 and convicted of espionage. He was serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian prison. Whelan and the US government have denied that he is a spy, and Washington has declared him “wrongly detained.”
The details of the prisoner swap, including the identities of the prisoners exchanged by the US and its allies, have not yet been officially confirmed. However, sources familiar with the matter say the deal involved complex negotiations with multiple countries, the report said.
According to news agency Reuters, flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed that a special Russian government plane used for prisoner swaps between the United States and Russia in the past flew from Moscow to the Russian region of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, and then headed back to the Russian capital.
Online Russian outlet Agentstvo has reported that in recent days at least six special Russian government planes have flown over areas where prisons holding dissidents are located.
According to reports, from the Russian side, four prisoners were released from the US as part of the deal. Reports quoting Russian news agency TASS indicated that the Russian prisoners were removed from the FBI electronic database, indicating a prisoner swap.
The four prisoners who have been released are Alexander Vinnik, Vladislav Klyushin, Vadim Konoshchenko and Maxim Marchenko, who were convicted of various crimes including money laundering and smuggling.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to confirm the development to the media, saying “I am not commenting on this yet.”
The multi-country prisoner exchange involves Russia and Belarus on the one hand, and the United States, Germany and Slovenia on the other.