Putin Personally Approved Arrest Of WSJ Journalist, Report Says

Russia says it will wait to consider the possibility of entering negotiations with the US over a prisoner swap until the courts settle the case of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS on Thursday that talks about a potential prisoner swap “can be examined only after a court delivers its verdict.” This is the same stance Russia maintained regarding the Brittney Griner case. Her swap with notorious arms trafficker Victor Bout came only after she was handed a 9-year sentence and began serving it at a prison some 300 southeast of Moscow.

Secretary of State Blinken demanded Gershkovich’s immediate release in a rare phone call last week with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

In the fresh Thursday comments, Ryabkov stressed that Moscow is not interested in any level of intervention by other countries. 

“We are absolutely not interested in this,” Ryabkov said upon the suggestion that an outside country could help mediate. “We have a functioning channel, in the past it was used to reach specific agreements; these agreements have been implemented so third countries don’t play a part here.”

The Biden administration’s recent classification of Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” paves the way for a potential prisoner swap as he’s now considered a hostage of a foreign government. 

The 31-year old WSJ reporter and American citizen had been detained by the FSB on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg on March 29. He’s accused of “espionage” for gathering information on a state-linked defense company. 

Bloomberg has a fresh report saying that President Putin personally signed off on his arrest, which the Kremlin has denied: 

The Kremlin on Thursday denied claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally endorsed the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for espionage.

Citing sources “familiar with the situation,” Bloomberg on Wednesday reported that the initiative to arrest Gershkovich came from “hawks among top officials of Russia’s security services.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the American journalist’s detention “the total prerogative of the special services” and not Putin’s decision.

The American reporter has yet to be granted consular access, something which has angered the Biden administration. Given his case is more serious than the WNBA’s Griner (given the spy allegations), it could drag on for months through the courts. Ex-Marine Paul Whelan is also still languishing in Russian prison, after his arrest in 2018. In 2020 he was handed a 16-year sentence, also for spying-related charges, which the US has condemned as false.