Major prisoner swap involving US and Russia ‘is under way’

A massive prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia was under way on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said.

The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details had not been publicly disclosed, did not specify who is included in the deal.

But Americans considered by the US to be wrongfully detained in Russia include Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive with joint British nationality from Michigan.

Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the US government considered baseless.

And Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has joint Russian and British nationality, has been imprisoned in Russia since April 2022 for speaking out against the war on Ukraine.

The deal would be the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, following a December 2022 trade that brought basketball star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout.

Russia has long been interested in getting back Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of some unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison.

Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pre-trial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.

US officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.

Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after travelling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the US have also said were false and trumped up, and he was serving a 16-year prison sentence.

Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including the April 2022 swap by Moscow of imprisoned marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.

That December, the US released notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout in exchange for getting back WNBA star Ms Griner, who had been jailed on drug charges.