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| Paul Whelan to be set free. |
Some tensions are cooling between Washington, DC and Moscow.
The Wall Street Journal reporter, the Canadian-American contractor who were held in the Russian Federation iron colleges for "trumped up" charges are going to be released.
The U.S. and Russia will do a prisoner swap. It will certainly get the far right angry.
After all, Brittney Griner was released through a prisoner swap and the far right went bonkers about it.
As President Joe Biden is in his lame duck presidency, he still manages to get things done while he finishes his term. And of course, Republicans will not give him credit and they will find the next shiny coin to latch on. They will continue to focus on Vice President Kamala Harris and find some outrage to her rise in polls.
Former president Donald J. Trump could not get the deal done. Biden did despite one of the individual's family members vocally supporting Trump.
Russia has agreed to a multi-country prisoner swap that will free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan, media reports say.
A senior Biden Administration official told media outlets that the two wrongfully imprisoned Americans will be in U.S. custody soon.
Specific details of the swap have not been made public yet.
Gershkovich was falsely accused of spying by Russia and recently sentenced to 16 years in prison.
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| Remind me on how Biden couldn't beat Trump. |
Paul Whelen is also serving a 16-year prison sentence. The U.S. says that he, too, has falsely been accused of espionage.
Whelan traveled to Russia several times from 2006 and maintained an intermittent presence on a Russian-language social media website, VKontakte (VK), where he had approximately 70 contacts. He has studied Russian but communicated online using Google Translate. He said in a deposition in 2013 that he holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and an MBA degree. He took courses at Northern Michigan University from fall 1988 to fall 1990 without earning a degree.
Whelan supported Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election; following Trump's victory, he posted in Russian Президент Трyмп Вперед!! ("President Trump Onward!!").
In 2018, Whelan was arrested in the Moscow area by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), which later confirmed his arrest. Whelan's twin brother David said Whelan arrived in Moscow on December 22 to attend the wedding of a former fellow Marine at the Hotel Metropol Moscow and to assist the groom's family members on their first visit to Russia, a country he had visited many times. He said his brother planned to return to Michigan on January 6, 2019, via Saint Petersburg. David said his brother entered Russia using his U.S. passport and had not been in contact with his family.
The BBC cited family members of Whelan, who said Whelan previously bragged about knowing an agent of the FSB, and was privy to an unusual cache of personal details about his friend, including which intelligence training school he attended (biographical information typically reserved for a very close circle). Whelan said the man was one of his oldest friends in Russia and that he had visited this man's house the winter before his arrest. Whelan also said he loaned his friend 80,000 Russian rubles ($1,147; £930), and claimed it was for the wedding. The FSB later said that the payment was for intelligence.
According to Whelan, his long-time friend framed him by appearing unexpectedly in the hotel, followed by authorities, who later arrested him. According to attorneys for Whelan, they could not provide the name of Whelan's Russian friend due to Russian secrecy rules, but Whelan's family identified the person as Ilya Yatsenko, whom the Russian newspaper Kommersant described as a major in the FSB's Department "K", which monitors Russian economic crimes.
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| Evan Gershkovich is out. |
Evan Gershkovich was detained by Russia's Federal Security Service on charges of espionage in March 2023, marking the first time a journalist working for an American outlet had been arrested on charges of spying in Russia since the Cold War. The White House and media advocacy groups have condemned the arrest. On July 19, 2024, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being convicted in an espionage trial. He was later released as part of a prisoner exchange in August.
Gershkovich was on assignment in Yekaterinburg, the counterintelligence department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained him for having information on a "Russian defence enterprise". Russian officials said he was collecting secrets on the "production and repair of military equipment" for the CIA.
According to U.S. officials, Gershkovich's driver dropped him off at a steakhouse at 4 p.m. and two hours later his phone was turned off. The Wall Street Journal hired a lawyer to find him at the FSB's headquarters but couldn't locate him. The Kremlin confirmed his arrest hours later. Dmitri Peskov, Russian president Vladimir Putin's press secretary, said that he was "caught red-handed" but could not provide further details. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said "we have irrefutable evidence that Gershkovich was engaged in espionage" during a visit to New York in July 2024.
Gershkovich was transferred to Moscow where he was formally arrested by a district court until May 29. He was then taken to Lefortovo Prison, a holding facility used by the Soviet Union to detain Soviet dissidents. He was formally charged on April 7. He was accused of acting on behalf of foreign intelligence and attempting to collect classified information about Uralvagonzavod, the largest main battle tank manufacturer in the world, in Yekaterinburg. United States ambassador to Russia Lynne M. Tracy met with Gershkovich on April 17 and wrote that he is "in good health and remains strong".
Gershkovich's detention by Russia's Federal Security Service marked the first time a journalist working for an American news outlet has been arrested in Russia on charges of spying since the Cold War. According to NPR, a court, operating in closed session, ordered Gershkovich held until the end of May while investigations were ongoing. According to Kommersant, he was scheduled to be transferred to Lefortovo prison while awaiting trial. A conviction for espionage could carry a sentence of 20 years.
Gershkovich appealed his arrest on April 3. A judge denied his appeal and rejected an offer from The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Company to post a bond of 50,000,000 ₽ (US$600,000). Gershkovich's lawyers said he was reading Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869) and watching cooking shows on monastery cuisine. In a handwritten letter from April 5 obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich said he was "not losing hope". He appeared in Moscow City Court on April 18 to appeal his pre-trial detention. A Moscow court extended his detention to August 30 on May 23, where Gershkovich's parents met him. The court rejected his legal team's offer to free him on bail of 50 million rubles ($614,000) or put him under house arrest. He appealed the extension on May 26; a Moscow court denied the appeal on June 22. Tracy met with Gershkovich on July 3.
Former US officials have speculated that the motivation behind the order for Gershkovich's arrest was an anticipated prisoner exchange for one or more high-profile Russians imprisoned in other countries. Gershkovich, who remained in the country following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine after his arrest in 2023.
When asked Wednesday about the prospects of getting home the two Americans, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Gray DC she didn’t have any specifics on the negotiations but said, “....This is a president that has made it a priority to get home wrongfully detained Americans back to their families, back to their loved ones. ... We are careful here. We do not negotiate in public. We cannot negotiate in public because we want to make sure that we get this job done, get this work done.”
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| Alsu Kurmasheva is out. |
Alsu Kurmasheva was also released too.
She is a Prague-based Russian-American journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Tatar-Bashkir Service. Kurmasheva was arrested in Kazan, Russia on October 18, 2023, and charged with failure to register as a foreign agent. The charge carried a potential sentence of five years in prison. She was released on August 1, 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Kurmasheva entered Russia on May 20, 2023, to deal with a family emergency, according to RFE/RL. She was temporarily detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2, 2023, at Kazan airport and authorities confiscated Kurmasheva's passports, preventing her from leaving the country. She was fined 10,000 rubles for failing to register her American passport on October 11, 2023, according to court documents.
Kurmasheva was detained again on October 18, 2023, and charged with failure to register as a foreign agent, punishable by up to five years in prison. Specifically, the charges against Kurmasheva allege that she “deliberately conducted a targeted collection of military information about Russian activities via the internet to transmit information to foreign sources." Her lawyer, Edgar Matevosyan, said she was pleading not guilty. On October 20, 2023, Russian authorities extended Kurmasheva's detention by three days. On October 23, 2023, a district court in Kazan rejected Kurmasheva's request for pretrial measures avoiding incarceration, instead assigning her to a detention center until December 5, 2023.
Kurnasheva's detainment garnered significant criticism, particularly from Western governments and international human rights and media freedom organizations. Dmitry Kolezev, a prominent Russian journalist, characterized her arrest as "another hostage has been taken." The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded Russia release Kurmasheva, expressing "deep concern" with her detention and stating "journalism is not a crime." The U.S. State Department claimed Kurmasheva's detention was a case of Russian harassment of American citizens. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia was harassing Americans. According to the Associated Press, analysts believe Russia may be using jailed Americans as bargaining chips after the increase of Russian-American tensions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On April 1, 2024, a Russian court extended her detention until June 5, 2024.
In July 2024, Kurmasheva was secretly sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for spreading "false information" about the Russian army. The charges were related to a book she had edited after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “Saying No To War,” which featured stories of 40 Russians who opposed the invasion.
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