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    Inside the prisoner exchange that set an American journalist free – podcast

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    When the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg in March 2023, he became the first American journalist in Russia charged with espionage since the end of the cold war. The Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, had been talking to his friend Evan that very morning. And, as he explains to Michael Safi, he has spent much of the past 16 months still in contact with Evan – but now in the form of letters sent to a Moscow prison. Gershkovich’s sham trial ended after only two days in July with a 16-year sentence. But ironically – for Pjotr and Evan’s other friends and family – it was a moment of hope: hope that Evan’s case had been rushed through because he was being readied for a historic prisoner exchange. More

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      Behind the Deal: Spies, a Killer, Secret Messages and Unseen Diplomacy

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      The negotiations that led to the prisoner swap and the freeing of Americans wrongfully held in Russia required patience and creativity, but gave both sides what they wanted most.A turning point came on June 25, when a group of C.I.A. officers sat across from their Russian counterparts during a secret meeting in a Middle Eastern capital.The Americans floated a proposal: an exchange of two dozen prisoners sitting in jails in Russia, the United States and scattered across Europe, a far bigger and more complex deal than either side had previously contemplated but one that would give both Moscow and Western nations more reasons to say yes.Quiet negotiations between the United States and Russia over a possible prisoner swap had dragged on for more than a year. They were punctuated by only occasional glimpses of hope for the families of the American prisoners — including Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, an American security contractor — growing increasingly impatient for their ordeal to end. Those hopes were always dashed when one of the two sides balked.But the June meeting changed things, according to accounts from American and Western officials and other people familiar with the long process of bringing the deal to fruition.The Russian spies took the proposal back to Moscow, and only days later the C.I.A. director was on the phone with a Russian spy chief agreeing to the broad parameters of a massive prisoner swap. On Thursday, seven different planes touched down in Ankara, Turkey, and exchanged passengers, bringing to a successful close an intensive diplomatic effort that took place almost entirely out of public view.The deal between longtime adversaries — negotiated mostly by spies and sometimes through secret messages hand-delivered by couriers — secured the release of Mr. Gershkovich, Mr. Whelan and 14 other Americans, Russians and Europeans imprisoned in Russia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      US reacts to major prisoner swap with Russia: ‘feat of diplomacy’ and ‘joyous’

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      The White House celebrated a “feat of diplomacy” on Thursday after a major prisoner swap between Russia and the west that included the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, among others.Both are US citizens accused by Russian authorities of espionage, charges they and the US government have denied, and a possible exchange had been mooted for months.The exchange on Thursday occurred at Ankara airport in Turkey, and involved people held in seven different countries including the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus. The Turkish presidency said 10 prisoners were relocated to Russia, 13 prisoners to Germany and three to the US.Among the prisoners returning to Russia was the assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been held in a German prison since 2019 for murdering a Chechen exile in Berlin in broad daylight.Joe Biden said in a statement immediately following the news that the three American citizens and one American green card holder were “unjustly” imprisoned in Russia – in addition to Gershkovich and Whelan, the other two are Alsu Kurmasheva, a US-Russian journalist, and Vladimir Kara-Murza – “was a feat of diplomacy”.“All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia – including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country. Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”Biden added he was grateful to the allies of the US who “stood with us throughout tough, complex negotiations to achieve this outcome”.He said: “This is a powerful example of why it’s vital to have friends in this world whom you can trust and depend upon. Our alliances make Americans safer.”Shortly afterward, Biden delivered remarks from the White House, surrounded by family members of the freed prisoners.“This is a very good afternoon,” the president said, adding that he and the family members had been able to speak to the released prisoners on the phone.He also asked the room to sing happy birthday to 12-year-old Miriam, daughter of Kurmasheva, who he said is turning 13 on Friday.The swap is likely to be considered a political coup for Biden in the waning months of his presidency, and a blow to Donald Trump, who has claimed on the 2024 campaign trail that he would free Gershkovich if re-elected.Trump has frequently voiced admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and said in May on his social media site, Truth Social, that if he won the November election, Gershkovich would be “released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office”, adding that Putin would “do that for me, but not for anyone else”.Kamala Harris, the vice-president and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, echoed Biden’s words on Thursday and added: “I will not stop working until every American who is wrongfully detained or held hostage is brought home.”On Thursday, White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden and Harris would welcome the released US citizens at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, and that Gershkovich, Whelan and Kurmasheva were expected to arrive on US soil on Thursday night.Emma Tucker, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, described the event as a “joyous day” for friends, family and colleagues of Gershkovich, and the “the millions of well-wishers in the US and around the world who stood with Evan and defended the free press”.Current and former US government officials and press freedom groups similarly rejoiced at the news.Barack Obama described the exchange as a “tremendous diplomatic achievement” and noted the “skill and persistence” of Biden, Harris and US allies.Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists, welcomed the news but said “it does not change the fact that Russia continues to suppress a free press”. Reporters Without Borders said they were “relieved” but said more than 40 other journalists remain detained in Russia.On Thursday afternoon, Trump criticized the swap on Truth Social, calling it a “bad” deal. “So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia? How many people do we get versus them? Are we also paying them cash?” he asked.Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, said that no money was exchanged. He said no sanctions were loosened to facilitate the deal.The swap comes a year and a half after the Biden administration secured the release of US basketball star Brittney Griner in late 2022, who had been held in Russian jail for almost 10 months on drug charges and was freed in exchange for the arms dealer Viktor Bout. At the time, Biden expressed regret that the deal did not include Whelan, who had been detained since 2018.Earlier in 2022, the Biden administration also secured the release of former US marine Trevor Reed, who was arrested in 2019 after Russian authorities said he assaulted an officer while being driven by police to a police station after a night of heavy drinking. Reed was released in exchange for a convicted Russian drug trafficker who was serving a long prison sentence in the US. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Day of great joy’: Wall Street Journal’s crusade to free Gershkovich succeeds

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      The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same. This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for the Wall Street Journal.“The strength, determination and resilience that Evan, his parents and his sister maintained throughout this long ordeal have been incredible. They have been an inspiration to all of us in the newsroom, to colleagues across the company and to supporters who have campaigned so hard for his release.”Tucker’s assistant editor, Paul Beckett, told the Guardian that this week, editors had detected “an inkling that something was coming”.From “seven o’clock this morning”, he said, he and other senior editors were in Tucker’s office, “trying to find out whatever information we could. We started to see some reports dribble out that things were in the offing, [and] we made the call to wait until we knew that our reporter was on the ground, out of Russian custody, free on the tarmac at Ankara, and then we’d publish.“We were sitting here and really trying to figure out what was happening and it was so complicated – we had flight tracking, we had people in the ground in Ankara, we had people at the White House, we had people at the national security council. We were essentially reporting on our own story, in a way.”Asked how staff reacted when Gershkovich’s freedom was confirmed, Beckett said: “It was great to see the newsroom gather around the office. There was applause. We had champagne, there were smiles, joy, there were tears of relief.“It’s a historic day for the Journal, it’s a historic day in geopolitics, in many ways. But there is just huge thankfulness after 16 months, it’s over.”View image in fullscreenIt has been a long 16 months. But after Gershkovich was arrested and accused of espionage, in late March 2023, the Journal mounted a high-profile campaign to stress his innocence, ensure he was not forgotten and press for his release.Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year, Tucker said: “After an initial flurry of attention in the weeks following Evan’s arrest, keeping the spotlight on his ordeal became a huge challenge for the newsroom amid jam-packed news cycles.“We used every grim milestone as a moment to organise publicity and get Evan back into the headlines: 100 days, his birthday in October, 250 days, every one of his court appearances.”The Journal’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal described some effects of the campaign: “Well-wishers raised banners at Major League Baseball games and Premier League soccer matches, calling for his release. Journalists and celebrity news presenters from [Tucker] Carlson to CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke out on his behalf.“Supporters received upbeat and joke-filled letters from Gershkovich, written in his nine-by-12-ft cell at Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, where Soviet interrogators once tortured and murdered alleged ‘class enemies’.”Beckett said: “We made a decision early on. Someone in the US government told me, really within 24 hours of Evan being taken, that there were times to be loud and there were times to be quiet. And that moment was the time to be loud, and we stayed loud.“Really the effort was to create a landscape in which there could be successful negotiation. We were never going to conduct those negotiations ourselves. But we also firmly believed that there’s so much going on in the world that if Evan ever fell out of the spotlight, it would make it that much more difficult for those negotiations to have been successful.“But this was not the Journal alone. The reaction from our colleagues in media globally, other governments, institutions supporting the free press and just people, well-wishers everywhere, that was the collective voice that spoke for Evan when he was silenced. That made the difference. We’re very grateful [for such] huge support, and we’re incredibly grateful for the happy outcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Journal staffers celebrated, it was only 13 days since Gershkovich was sentenced, in a Moscow courtroom, to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Then, Tucker and Almar Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Journal, lamented a “disgraceful, sham conviction … after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist.”On Thursday, as the good news spread but before the Journal had confirmed its reporter was free, a dedicated page on the Journal website still hosted a counter showing time elapsed since Gershkovich was arrested. It stood at 491 days, minutes ticking forward towards 492.At the top of the front page, headings read: “Evan Gershkovich, Wrongfully Convicted, Sentenced to 16 Years, A Stolen Year, His Family Reflects, A Timeline, His Reporting, How You Can Help, Write a Message, Latest News and Get Email Updates.”But the paper was ready. After it launched its report on the release deal – and as Annie Linskey, a reporter, described “applause in WSJ’s DC office” – the Journal also rolled out a detailed account of how “secret negotiations to free … Gershkovich unfolded on three continents, involving spy agencies, billionaires, political power players and his fiercest advocate – his mom”.Beckett said: “A lot has happened out of our sight, and appropriately so. Both sides said that was important. The US government obviously was in touch with Evan’s parents and our legal team, but we were still on tenterhooks until two hours ago.”In her email to staff, reported by the Times, Tucker said the paper would now “ensure Evan is well looked after. We want him to take as much time as he needs to recuperate privately and are doing everything we can to support him and his family. I will be travelling later today to meet him when he lands in Texas.”Tucker also said the Journal was “happy too for the other Americans released today who will soon be reunited with their families”. But the paper’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal also noted a prisoner not set free.“Marc Fogel, a history teacher at the high school where US Moscow embassy staff sent their children … is serving 14 years in a penal colony. He was arrested in 2021 for carrying less than an ounce of medical marijuana. He said he had intended to use the drug for medical purposes to treat chronic pain.“The US has sought to free him on ‘humanitarian grounds’.”“Obviously, we feel for” prisoners not yet freed, Beckett said. “That is very tough, and I hope that the US government can work its magic again and get these folks home.” More

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      in Elections

      How The Wall Street Journal Covered Evan Gershkovich’s Imprisonment in Russia

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      For more than a year, the top of The Wall Street Journal’s website has featured prominent coverage of the imprisonment of Evan Gershkovich, one of the news organization’s reporters. His image and the words #IStandWithEvan appear on a large screen in The Journal’s New York newsroom. Colleagues wear “I Stand With Evan” T-shirts and “Free Evan” pins.The machinations of the international prisoner swap on Thursday, involving Mr. Gershkovich and around two dozen others, was far outside the bounds of what The Wall Street Journal could do to help him. But since Russia imprisoned Mr. Gershkovich in March 2023, The Journal has pushed to keep his detainment top of mind.The organization has operated letter-writing campaigns, launched social media blitzes and staged a 24-hour read-a-thon of Mr. Gershkovich’s reporting. Colleagues across the world took part in runs on the first anniversary of his arrest, while employees in New York plunged into the cold waters at Brighton Beach in Brooklyn for a swim event.“After an initial flurry of attention in the weeks following Evan’s arrest, keeping the spotlight on his ordeal became a huge challenge for the newsroom amid jam-packed news cycles,” Emma Tucker, the editor in chief of The Journal, told The New York Times in an email earlier this year.An electronic sign at the News Corp headquarters in New York marks the first anniversary of the imprisonment in Russia of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“We used every grim milestone as a moment to organize publicity and get Evan back into the headlines: 100 days, his birthday in October, 250 days, every one of his court appearances,” she wrote.The Journal has continuously and strenuously denied the espionage charges against Mr. Gershkovich, saying he was an accredited journalist doing his job.His arrest happened just five weeks after Ms. Tucker began her tenure as The Journal’s top editor. The Journal set up a dedicated section on its website featuring news updates on Mr. Gershkovich. It also has a counter logging the number of days since he had been arrested and it included resources for writing messages of support to Mr. Gershkovich and his family.In October, The Journal moved its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, into a new role to work full time on securing Mr. Gershkovich’s release.Mr. Gershkovich’s family members, who live in the United States, are in regular contact with The Journal, which has helped to coordinate their interviews with the media.On March 29, to mark his year of detainment, The Journal wrapped its newspaper in a special section with a blank front page bearing the headline “His Story Should Be Here.” More

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      in Elections

      Evan Gershkovich’s Conviction in Russia Won’t Stop Journalists From Seeking the Truth

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      The only surprise in the guilty verdict against Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent who was arrested in Russia last year on phony charges of espionage, was that it came so quickly. The charge itself was a farce. No evidence was ever made public, the hearings were held in secret, and Mr. Gershkovich’s lawyers were barred from saying anything in public about the case.Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest, trial and conviction all serve President Vladimir Putin’s goal of silencing any honest reporting from inside Russia about the invasion of Ukraine and of making Russians even warier of speaking with any foreigner about the war.Independent Russian news outlets have been almost entirely shut down and their journalists imprisoned or forced to leave the country, so foreign correspondents are among the few remaining sources of independent reporting from inside Russia. Mr. Gershkovich’s last published article before his arrest, on March 29, 2023, was headlined “Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone” — just the sort of vital independent journalism that challenges Mr. Putin’s claims of a strong and vibrant Russia fighting a just war.Russian prosecutors claimed that Mr. Gershkovich, acting on instructions from Washington, used “painstaking conspiratorial methods” to obtain “secret information” about Uralvagonzavod, a Russian weapons factory near Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested and tried.The existence of this massive industrial complex is well known, but the charge of espionage allowed Russian prosecutors to keep the entire proceeding secret while fueling Mr. Putin’s propaganda about efforts by the United States and Europe to destabilize Russia.Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free expression, especially about the war in Ukraine, is unrelenting. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 in detention, including Mr. Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian dual citizen and an editor with the U.S.-government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Sally Buzbee, Washington Post Editor, to Leave Role

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      Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, will take her place temporarily.The executive editor of The Washington Post, Sally Buzbee, will leave her role, a major and sudden change at one of the nation’s pre-eminent news organizations.Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, will take her place through the presidential election, the company said on Sunday night. He will start in the role immediately. Robert Winnett, a deputy editor of the Telegraph Media Group in Britain, will take over after the election.Mr. Murray will then transition to a new role, the company said in a news release, building a new division of The Washington Post focused on service and social media journalism.At that point, Mr. Winnett, Mr. Murray and David Shipley, who oversees the opinion section at The Post, will each report independently to Will Lewis, the chief executive and publisher.Ms. Buzbee, 58, steered the newspaper for the last three years, a turbulent period that resulted in award-winning journalism as well as a drop in audience and an exodus of some top talent.The Post has greatly expanded its editing ranks under Ms. Buzbee, announcing the addition of roughly 41 positions in 2021, and revamping its vaunted Style section. It has received six Pulitzer Prize awards since she joined, three of them this year. The paper also shut down its Sunday magazine, a move that upset many of the newspaper’s feature writers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Plays Up His Putin Ties in Claiming He Could Get Gershkovich Released

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      Former President Donald J. Trump claimed that, if re-elected, he could draw on his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin to press Russia into releasing Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in a Moscow jail for more than a year.Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post that Mr. Gershkovich would be “released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” suggesting that his securing Mr. Gershkovich’s release was contingent on his defeating President Biden in November.“Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added. Mr. Trump has frequently bragged about his positive relationship with Mr. Putin, whose strongman tendencies he has praised in interviews and on the campaign trail.Asked about Mr. Trump’s post, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that “Putin has no contact with Donald Trump, of course.”Mr. Gershkovich, who was arrested in March last year in Russia and charged with espionage shortly after, has been designated by the White House as “wrongfully detained,” a label signifying that the United States views him as the equivalent of a political hostage and believes the charges against him are fabricated.Russia has not presented any evidence to support the spying charge, which Mr. Gershkovich and The Journal have vociferously rejected. The Biden administration has said it is working to secure his release.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden va detrás de Trump en 7 ‘swing states’, según encuesta

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      Los resultados de la encuesta de The Wall Street Journal en siete de los estados indecisos hacen eco de otros sondeos recientes.El expresidente Donald Trump sigue adelante del presidente Joe Biden en los estados disputados con más probabilidades de decidir la presidencia, según encuestas de The Wall Street Journal en siete estados clave.Trump mantenía una estrecha ventaja en seis de ellos: Arizona, Georgia, Míchigan, Nevada, Carolina del Norte y Pensilvania. Biden lideraba en Wisconsin.Los resultados hacen eco de otras encuestas recientes, incluida una serie de sondeos de The New York Times/Siena College en seis estados disputados (conocidos como swing o battleground en inglés) el pasado mes de octubre. En los últimos cinco meses, Trump ha liderado casi todas las encuestas en Arizona, Georgia, Míchigan, Nevada y Carolina del Norte, estados que le darían más de los 270 votos electorales necesarios para ganar.Sin embargo, aunque los resultados no sean tan diferentes, han frenado las esperanzas demócratas de que Biden ganara terreno en las encuestas tras su enérgico discurso sobre el estado de la Unión y el final de la temporada de primarias.Esas esperanzas no carecían de fundamento. En teoría, muchas de las condiciones para una remontada de Biden deberían estar en su lugar. La confianza del consumidor está aumentando. Una revancha Biden-Trump es ahora una realidad inevitable. La preocupación por la edad del presidente pareció remitir con el estado de la Unión y el inicio de la campaña para las elecciones generales.A pesar de las decenas de millones de dólares en publicidad anticipada de los demócratas y un vigoroso programa de campaña de Biden en los estados clave, las encuestas de The Wall Street Journal seguían revelando que los votantes tenían una impresión profundamente negativa de su rendimiento en el cargo, su resistencia mental y física y su gestión económica. Trump tenía ventaja sobre Biden en casi todos los temas, y normalmente por mucho.El aborto y la democracia fueron las únicas excepciones.Nate Cohn es el analista político jefe del Times. Cubre elecciones, opinión pública, demografía y encuestas. Más de Nate Cohn More