The United States is negotiating with Russia on the exchange of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich. This was announced on Friday, July 7, during a briefing by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, his words are quoted by the New York Times.
“There were discussions, but they did not lead to an understanding <…>. I can tell you that we have a commitment and a conviction that we will do everything we can to get him home,” Sullivan said.
Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also confirmed the information about the negotiations between the US and Russia on the exchange of Gershkovich.
The journalist was detained on March 29 in Yekaterinburg, the next day a court in Moscow sent him to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. According to the FSB, Gershkovich “on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex” (Article 276 of the Criminal Code).
In April, the US State Department awarded the journalist the status of «wrongfully detained». US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US President Joe Biden called for his release. Bloomberg wrote that Vladimir Putin personally approved the arrest of Gershkovich at the initiative of high-ranking security officials.