Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan will be released from jail as part of a major prisoner swap between Russia and the United States, according to reports.
Gershkovich — who covers Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union for the Journal — was arrested on March 29 in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, about 800 miles east of Moscow. The Federal Security Service, Russia’s top domestic security agency and replacement for the Soviet-era KGB, specifically accused Gershkovich of “acting on U.S. orders to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex that constitutes a state secret.”
Earlier this month, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security penal colony.
Whelan, meanwhile, has been jailed in Russia since December 2018 on charges of espionage, which his family and the U.S. government have said are manufactured. He was arrested during a trip to Moscow for the wedding of a fellow former Marine, and then jailed in the notorious Lefortovo Prison.
In 2020 he was also sentenced to 16 years in prison.
