HOPE FOR EVAN
Hope for WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich as Joe Biden confirms he’s ‘serious’ about prisoner swap & ‘process is underway’
PRESIDENT Joe Biden said he is "serious" about pursuing a prisoner swap to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
The US leader is considering the move so that the journalist, 31, can be released from detention in Russia on bogus espionage charges.
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Gershkovich has now spent more than 100 days behind bars.
Biden today hinted that he was intending to take the Kremlin up on its offer to exchange prisoners, despite its demands a deal must be done behind closed doors.
Last week, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said negotiations must be carried out "in complete silence" as pressure mounts against Russia.
The White House previously warned discussions "had not produced a clear pathway to a resolution."
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But Biden now seems to have got the ball rolling and shared a brief update that made the US' position crystal clear.
Speaking at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, on Thursday, he said: "I'm serious about a prisoner exchange.
"I’m serious about doing all we can to free Americans being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter.
"And that process is underway."
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Gershkovich was detained on "suspicion of espionage" on March 29 while on assignment in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural mountains.
The correspondent was then transferred to the notorious Lefortovo prison near Moscow, where he has since been held in solitary confinement, without trial.
His appeal against the extension of his pretrial detention to the end of August was denied.
The American ambassador has been allowed to visit him only twice during his imprisonment.
health and spirits are reportedly holding up well, and yet his days spent in a tiny cell will have passed agonisingly slowly for a young man who was simply doing his job.
The Russian authorities have offered no evidence that Gershkovich was doing anything other in Yekaterinburg than gathering information to share with his newspaper’s readers.
He had been stationed in Russia for around six years before he was arrested.
Putin's arrest of Gershkovich has previously been branded a "cowardly act" as the dictator desperately tries to escape accountability over his war in Ukraine.
Last year, the US and Russia organised a prisoner swap to free WNBA star Brittany Griner and notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.