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Russia, the US and a series of other countries exchanged 26 prisoners including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on Thursday in the largest swap since the cold war, according to Turkish security officials.
The exchange on Thursday in Ankara involving seven countries was the culmination of many months of painstaking diplomacy after President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine plunged US-Russia relations to their lowest level in decades. The talks also drew in Germany, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and Belarus.
Russia agreed to release 16 prisoners including Gershkovich, who had been convicted on spying charges, and Paul Whelan, a former US marine serving a sentence for espionage, as well as other individuals including prominent political prisoner Ilya Yashin, the Turkish officials said.
In return, a total of 10 people, including two children, were transferred to Russia, including Vadim Krasikov, a hitman convicted of a murder in broad daylight in Berlin in 2021, they said.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested while on a reporting assignment in Ekaterinburg, a city in Russia’s Ural Mountains, in March last year and was later convicted of espionage, on charges that the Wall Street Journal and US government said were baseless.
Russia claimed to have caught Gershkovich “red-handed” when he was arrested in an Ekaterinburg café and said it had “incontrovertible proof” of his guilt, but never provided any evidence in public.
A court in Ekaterinburg sentenced the reporter to 16 years in prison in July following a rushed three-day trial. Gershkovich reportedly denied the charges during his secret trial.
Russia detained several Americans in the period leading up to and immediately following its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine in what was widely seen as a hostage-taking strategy aimed at securing the release of the Kremlin’s operatives from prison in the west.
Turkey, a Nato member, has sought to position itself as a mediator between the west and Russia. Ankara refused to join the US and EU sanctions regime against Moscow for its war in Ukraine, including by keeping its airspace open to Russian aircraft.
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