Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia on charges he and the U.S. government have rejected as politically motivated, has asked the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to step up pressure on Russia to secure his release and that of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
Whelan, 54, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018 on espionage charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison in May 2020 following a trial that was condemned by the United States as a "mockery of justice.”
As he marked 2,000 days in Russian detention, Whelan on June 21 told CNN by phone from prison that the U.S. government should take more decisive action to secure his and Gershkovich's release, possibly in a prisoner exchange.
"The U.S. needs to go out and do something, fill up Guantanamo Bay [detention facility] with Russian officials, arrest Russian spies -- do something that makes the Kremlin sit up and take notice and say, 'OK, yeah, right. Now it's time that we're gonna get Evan [Gershkovich] and Paul back and then we want back what you've got of ours, and we'll call it a day,'" Whelan told CNN.
Gershkovich became the first U.S. journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War when he was detained in March 2023 and charged with trying to obtain military secrets. He and his employer have vehemently denied the charges as politically motivated.
Gershkovich, who like Whelan has been designated by the U.S. government as "wrongfully detained," is being held in pretrial detention and is due to go on trial on June 26.
Gershkovich is one of two American reporters currently being held by Russian authorities. The other is Alsu Kurmasheva, an RFE/RL journalist who holds dual Russian-American citizenship.
Kurmasheva, 47, was arrested in Kazan in October and charged with failing to register as a "foreign agent" under a punitive Russian law that targets journalists, civil society activists, and others. She’s also been charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
RFE/RL and the U.S. government say the charges are reprisals for her work as a journalist for RFE/RL in Prague.
Unlike Whelan and Gershkovich, Kurmasheva has yet to be designated as "wrongfully detained."
Such a designation would ensure that her case would be assigned to the office of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the U.S. State Department, raising the political profile of her situation and allowing the Biden administration to allocate more resources to securing her release.
