A massive prisoner swap involving the US and Russia is under way, a person familiar with the matter says.
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details had not been publicly disclosed, did not specify who was 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 from Michigan.
OLYMPIC SCHEDULE: Your day-to-day guide to all the action in Paris, in AEST times
Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the US government considered baseless.
In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.
Capus said the broadcaster welcomed ”news of Alsu’s imminent release and are grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia”.
Kurmasheva, a dual US-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.
The deal would be the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, following a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the US 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 a confluence of unusual developments, including a startlingly 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 on 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 pretrial 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 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 traveling 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 Brittney Griner, who’d been jailed on drug charges.
Watch every moment, every medal of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 live and free on Channel 9 and 9Now. Plus, every event ad-free and in 4K on Stan Sport.
links to content on ABC
9News
