President Vladimir Putin said he hoped Russia and the United States would agree to a prisoner swap for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan, though he noted how difficult negotiations could be.
Putin spoke about Whelan and Gershkovich during his year-end press conference when he was asked about a recent offer the Biden administration made to secure the two men’s release, which the State Department has said was rejected.
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“We want to reach an agreement, and these agreements must be mutually acceptable and must suit both parties,” the Russian leader said. “It is not simple. I will not go into details now, but in general, it seems to me that we speak a language that is understandable to each other. I hope we will find a solution. But, I repeat, the American side must hear us and make an appropriate decision, one that suits the Russian side.”
Whelan was arrested in late 2018 while in Russia for a wedding and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020 on an espionage charge, which both he and the U.S. government strongly reject. Similarly, Gershkovich was arrested by the Federal Security Service in March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg on espionage charges that both he, his employer, and the U.S. government have decried as fraudulent.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier this month that Russia turned down a “new and significant proposal” for Gershkovich and Whelan’s return.
“We have made clear all along we want — that we do not want to leave either one of them behind. We want to bring both Evan and Paul home,” Miller said. “They received the proposal. We know that they — let me just say they rejected it. This was not a case of them not having responded to us. They rejected the offer that was on the table.”
The Biden administration has agreed to two prisoner exchanges with the Kremlin in 2022 to secure the releases of Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner, neither of whom were charged under the guise of espionage. U.S. officials said at the time they secured Griner’s release about a year ago and that the Kremlin viewed Whelan’s espionage charge as a more serious offense, making negotiations for him more difficult.
Whelan’s brother, David, recently told the Washington Examiner that he expected his brother would be home by now after all the attention his case got at the time of Griner’s release.
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“I thought that after the last exchange, there was an awful lot of press from the White House, the U.S. government those first days after Dec. 8 last year, where they were immediately getting back to work, they were really going to come up with new ideas, they were immediately going to look for new ways to bring Paul home,” David Whelan told the Washington Examiner. “And none of that really happened.”
It’s unclear what Russia is seeking in exchange for Paul Whelan’s and Gershkovich’s release.
