Former Marine Paul Whelan and WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich have been released from Russian custody as part of a complex, multi-country prisoner swap.
Whelan has been in Russian custody since January 2019, and Gershkovich since March 2023. Whelan is serving a 20-year sentence, and Gershkovich was recently sentenced to 16 years by a Russian court. Both had been held and convicted on espionage charges.
The deal also included the release of a British journalist, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who had been sentenced to 20 years in a Siberian penal colony.
The Russians are getting a GRU assassin, Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in a German Prison for the assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Georgian-born Chechen dissident, in broad daylight in a Berlin park. Also included in the deal are 4 un-named Russians being held in the US on cybercrime charges and possibly 2 deep cover Russian agents that were caught in Slovenia a few years back.