Washington — Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, stated that there is potential for an agreement with the U.S. to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held for almost a year on unproven espionage charges. In an interview this week, Putin was asked by former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson if he would release Gershkovich, who is currently awaiting trial, so that Carlson could bring him back to the United States. Putin expressed his desire to see the journalist return to the U.S., but indicated that the Kremlin expected something in return.
“We have made numerous gestures of goodwill out of decency that I believe we have exhausted,” Putin stated, emphasizing that the Kremlin is looking for reciprocal actions from the U.S.
Click here to view related media.
click to expand
Without explicitly naming him, Putin suggested that he wanted Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov in exchange for Gershkovich. Krasikov is presently serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a former Chechen fighter in a Berlin park in 2019. The State Department announced in early December that it had submitted a “new and substantial” proposal to Russia for the release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, an American businessman who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for espionage charges that he and his family vehemently deny. The U.S. considers both Gershkovich and Whelan to be wrongfully detained. “That proposal was rejected by Russia,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Dec. 5. Putin acknowledged in his year-end news conference that there were discussions between the Kremlin and Washington, but stated that the U.S. had not made a satisfactory offer. In response, Miller said the U.S. had “put multiple offers on the table.”
“So far we have seen them refuse to take us up on our proposals, and we hope that they will change the way they’ve handled this going forward,” Miller said on Dec. 14. Putin informed Carlson that “there is an ongoing dialogue” between the U.S. and Russian special services, and that such discussions have been successful in the past. “Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well,” Putin remarked. “But we have to come to an agreement.”There have been two prisoner swaps between the U.S. and Russia in recent years to secure the release of Marine veteran Trevor Reed and WNBA star Brittney Griner, both of whom the U.S. also believed were wrongfully detained in Russia. “I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland,” Putin said. “But at the end of the day, it does not make sense to keep him imprisoned in Russia. We want the U.S. special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing.”
The White House stated in January that President Biden has been “personally engaged” in the efforts to secure the release of Americans who are held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad, including Gershkovich and Whelan.
More from CBS News
Caitlin Yilek
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at cbsnews.com and is based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
