Veteran Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich Among Those Freed in Major Russia Prisoner Swap

US. reporter Evan Gershkovich was among those freed from Russia Thursday as part of a massive prisoner swap, his employer, The Wall Street Journal, said.

"Evan is free and on his way home," Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker said in a joint statement with the paper's publisher Almar Latour.

The statement added that former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva were part of the "multilateral prisoner exchange."

Gershkovich and Whelan were accused of espionage by Russian authorities, a charge they and the U.S. government had consistently denied. Gershkovich was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg and was subsequently sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan was arrested in December 2018 while attending a wedding in Moscow and received a 16-year sentence in 2020. Kurmasheva was detained in October 2023, charged with failure to register as a foreign agent.