Putin believes “agreement can be reached” for WSJ’s Gershkovich

Russia president Vladimir Putin said Thursday he believed “an agreement can be reached” to free imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter  Evan Gershkovich, reports Max Seddon and Felicia Schwartz of the Financial Times.

Seddon and Schwartz report, “Russia’s president compared Gershkovich’s imprisonment in Moscow to ‘a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the US,’ a likely reference to Vadim Krasikov, who killed a former Chechen rebel Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin’s Tiergarten park in 2019. US officials have said Russia has raised his case in prisoner swap negotiations.

“Putin appeared to hint that Krasikov, who German prosecutors have said likely carried out the hit for Russia’s FSB security service, was acting on Moscow’s orders, despite earlier denials.

“‘There was a patriot who eliminated [Khangoshvili] in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not. That is a different question,’ Putin said.

“His comments came in an interview in the Kremlin with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, the first he has given to western media since ordering the invasion of Ukraine two years ago.”

Read more here.