WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich freed from Russian prison in massive prisoner swap

The job of being a journalist around the world can be a dangerous one; reporters literally risk their lives to report the news. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that in 2023, 99 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, more than three-fourths of whom were killed covering the Israel–Gaza war. Outside of the war in Gaza, the deaths of journalists were down compared to the 69 deaths in 2022. CPJ also documented 320 journalists who had been imprisoned globally in 2023, with China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam leading the list for incarcerations.

The best known of these imprisoned journalists has Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, who was detained and jailed on March 29, 2023, in Russia. Gershkovich was an accredited journalist working in Russia when he was arrested based on allegations of being a spy, something both he and the Wall Street Journal vehemently deny. As of July 19, 2024, Gershkovich had been sentenced to 16 years in a Russian penal colony. The Wall Street Journal reported this came after he was “wrongfully convicted in a hurried, secret trial that the U.S. Government has condemned as a sham.”

But on Aug. 1, 2024, he was released as part of an extensive multi-nation prisoner exchange that involved the Russians releasing more than a dozen prisoners in return for multiple Russians being held in the U.S. and Europe, including a convicted assassin. The Journal ran a lengthy article giving the full story on how Gershkovich’s release was secured in what has been described as the most elaborate prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War.