Russian President Vladimir Putin told Tucker Carlson that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich could be released if a deal is made.
In March 2023, Gershkovich was accused by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of spying against Russia while he was reporting in Yekaterinburg.
Carlson said to Putin, “I’m just gonna ask you one last question and that’s about someone who’s very famous the United States probably not here. Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, he’s 32, and he’s been in prison for almost a year.”
“This is a huge story United States and I just want to ask you directly, without getting into details over to your version of what happened if as a sign of your decency, you’d will be willing to release into us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.”
Putin responded, “We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner,” Putin said. “However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps. When I talk about the partners, I first of all refer to special services. Special services are in contact with one another. They are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.”
The Russian president added that he believed the American journalist was a spy.
“You know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information and does that in conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage. And that is exactly what he was doing. He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly,” he said. “Maybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative. Considering the sheer fact that this is qualify this espionage. The fact has been proven as he was caught red handed when he was receiving this information. If it had been some farfetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then. But he was caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information. What is it then?”
He noted that while he does not know who Gershkovich was allegedly working for, he “would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage. And he was working for the US special services, some other agencies. I don’t think he was working for Monaco as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information. It is up to the special services to come to an agreement. Some groundwork has been laid. There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services. Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he was doing? I don’t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers taken prisoner on the road and then drove his car over their heads. What kind of person is that? Can he even be called human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not. That is a different question.”
Carlson responded, “I mean, that’s a completely different. He’s a 32-year-old newspaper reporter.”
“He’s not just a journalist. I reiterate. He’s a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information,” Putin asserted. “Yes, it is different, but still, I’m talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the US authorities, wherever they are serving a sentence. He added, “I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. But at the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia.”
“We want the U.S. Special Services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well. But we have to come to an agreement.”
At the time of Gershkovich’s arrest, Russia released a statement reading, “The FSB investigation charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of his country. He categorically denied all accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released a joint statement on the Senate Democrats website saying, “We demand the baseless, fabricated charges against Mr. Gershkovich be dropped and he be immediately released and reiterate our condemnation of the Russian government’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish independent journalists and civil society voices.”
