Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich requested an interview with Russian President Vladimir in one last show of bravery and defiance against the Kremlin before he was finally freed as part of a hectic, top-secret deal to release three Americans imprisoned in Russia.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich requested an interview with Russian President Vladimir in one last show of bravery and defiance against the Kremlin before he was finally freed as part of a hectic, top-secret deal to release three Americans imprisoned in Russia.
Gershkovich, 32 – who was released on Thursday after he was arrested and accused of being an American spy last year – had received a form to request presidential clemency from Putin in the days leading up to his release, the WSJ reported.
As he filled out the form, the journalist used the final line to cheekily ask the Moscow leader, who typically shies away from Western media, if he would be willing to sit down for an interview with the reporter.
The tongue-in-cheek request allowed Gershkovich to get the last laugh on the Kremlin as he flew home to the US as part of the largest multi-country prisoner swap since the Cold War, which saw 24 prisoners freed, including former US Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.
Whelan, 54, was visiting Russia for a friend’s wedding when he was arrested for espionage in 2018. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020.
Members of Whelan’s family told the BBC that he had traveled to Russia multiple times in the past, and boasted about being close with a Federal Security Service (FSS) agent. The FSS is the main successor agency to the Soviet Union’s KGB.
He claimed to have visited the man’s house the winter before his arrest, where he said he loaned him over $1,140 for the upcoming wedding.
The FSS insisted that the payment was actually for intelligence – an allegation that Whelan repeatedly denied.
The historic deal first came together in February in talks between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with the deal initially set to feature top Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
Navalny’s death just a few days later threw a wrench in the plans, with the world leaders regrouping and forced to keep the deal so top-secret that insiders resorted to keeping the talks analog and hand delivering drafts on paper to US and German officials, according to the WSJ.
