WSJ’s Gershkovich is being released

Evan Gershkovich

Russia is releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan as part of a major prisoner swap with the U.S., report Jennifer Jacobs and Cagan Koc of Bloomberg News.

Jacobs and Koc report, “Further details of the exchange weren’t immediately available. The US has been in extensive talks to achieve the release of Gershkovich and Whelan, who were designated as wrongly detained by the State Department.

“Putin said in June that Russian and US intelligence services were in contact and that President Joe Biden’s administration was taking energetic steps to secure Gershkovich’s release.

“Earlier this year, Russia claimed it was close to a deal for an exchange that would have included Gershkovich, Whelan and Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, before the latter’s death in February in an Arctic penal colony. A Western official in the weeks after the death of Putin’s most prominent critic confirmed talks took place but denied an agreement was imminent.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.