Gershkovich’s fate will come down to Putin’s mood

Fred Kaplan writes for Slate that the fate of jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, scheduled to go on trial in Russia next week, will come down to the mood of Russia leader Vladimir Putin.

Kaplan writes, “The officials negotiating for Gershkovich’s release are still aiming for Whelan’s freedom as well. American jails aren’t holding any Russians quite as prominent as Bout, but Kremlin officials have expressed interest in a trade for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian agent who is serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a former Chechen rebel leader in Berlin. In the past year or so, several Russians have also been arrested on charges of espionage in Slovenia, Brazil, and other countries with which the U.S. has good relations.

“All negotiations of this sort are much more difficult than they might have been a few years ago, given the broad breakdown in Moscow–Washington relations since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The war certainly complicated Griner’s position. In her memoir, she writes that by the time her case came up, she ‘wasn’t just another prisoner’ but a ‘chess piece in a showdown between superpowers.’ Years earlier, an arrest such as hers could have been settled in a deal worked out with a local apparatchik—but her case, she writes, ‘was already at the Kremlin.’

“Gershkovich’s case, of course, has been at the Kremlin all along. That could intensify the severity of his punishment—or accelerate his release date, depending, perhaps, on Putin’s mood.”

Read more here.