Vladimir Putin suggested that a deal could be made to free imprisoned US journalist Evan Gershkovich by swapping him for a Russian assassin serving a life sentence in Germany. Russia’s president compared Gershkovich’s imprisonment in Moscow to a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the US, likely referring to Vadim Krasikov, who killed a former Chechen rebel Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten park in 2019. US officials have mentioned that Russia has raised Krasikov’s case in prisoner swap negotiations. Putin seemed to imply that Krasikov, who German prosecutors have said likely carried out the hit for Russia’s FSB security service, was acting on Moscow’s orders, despite previous denials. These comments were made in an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, the first with western media since ordering the invasion of Ukraine two years ago. The conversation provided the most concrete description yet of Russia’s conditions to release Gershkovich, a 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who has been jailed for almost a year on espionage charges. The US government and the paper reject the charges and describe them as completely false. The Wall Street Journal late on Thursday said: “Evan is a journalist, and journalism is not a crime.”
Another US journalist, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Alsu Kurmasheva, is also being held in Russia after being arrested last year. Kurmasheva, who is also a Russian citizen, is accused of violating a law on “foreign agents” and may face additional charges.
US Marine veteran Paul Whelan was convicted of espionage charges in Russia in 2020, which he and the US vehemently deny, and is serving a 16-year sentence in a rural prison colony. Gershkovich was detained by Russia’s FSB in March 2023 while he was on a reporting assignment in the city of Ekaterinburg. Russian state media had promoted the interview ever since Carlson, who has become a star in Russia after making sympathetic comments about Putin, was first spotted at the Bolshoi ballet earlier this week. By granting the rare meeting to Carlson, who has broadcast his programme on Elon Musk’s social media platform X since being fired from Fox News last year, the Kremlin appeared to hope it could reach sympathetic audiences ahead of the US election.
His response to Carlson’s first question lasted 36 minutes and covered the past thousand years of Ukraine’s history with Russia. He proffered a thick folder full of letters written by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a 17th-century Cossack leader.
Putin repeated familiar grievances against the US, which he blamed for forcing him to order the invasion of Ukraine. He said he had told US President Joe Biden shortly before the war began that “you are making a huge mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that is happening there, in Ukraine, by pushing Russia away”.
Putin also dismissed US attempts to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia or weaken its economy through sanctions aimed at isolating the country and cutting off supply chains for its war machine. He said Russia’s burgeoning trade relationship with China meant US hegemony and the dollar’s role as global reserve currency were on the wane. US officials played down the interview before it aired, saying, “Remember, you’re listening to Vladimir Putin, and you shouldn’t take at face value anything he has to say.”
