Vladimir Putin has claimed imprisoned American reporter Evan Gershkovich is a spy who was caught ‘red handed’ with classified information.
Gershkovich, 32, was detained on March 29 last year and accused of espionage, the first American journalist to be arrested for alleged spying since the Cold War.
The Russian president, in a controversial two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson released on Thursday night, restated that he was open to a deal to send him home.
Putin has many times insisted the wrongly jailed writer would only be released as part of a trade, and gave no new information during the interview.
Gershkovich was reporting for the Wall Street Journal, with press credentials, when he was grabbed by the Federal Security Service in the city of Yekaterinburg.
Evan Gershkovich was detained on March 29 last year and accused of espionage, the first American journalist to be arrested for alleged spying since the Cold War
Putin insisted Gershkovich was a spy despite Carlson saying he was ‘obviously not a spy, he’s a kid… he’s not a super spy and everybody knows that’.
‘You know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law,’ Putin said.
‘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.’
Putin left open the possibility that Gershkovich received the material ‘out of carelessness’, but that his actions definitely ‘qualified’ as espionage.
‘The fact has been proven as he was caught red handed when he was receiving this information,’ he claimed.
‘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?’
Evan Gershkovich, 32, stands inside an enclosure for defendants during a court hearing in Moscow on November 28, when his pre-trial detention was extended for two months
Gershkovich leaving court, the last time he was seen, with no end in sight to his detention and no date set for his trial
Gershkovich puts on a brave face as he smiles with guards, right, is escorted from the Lefortovsky court in Moscow
The Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich’s family, and the White House repeatedly said he was not a spy, and was detrained while doing his job as a reporter.
President Joe Biden promised to being him home, and the State Department declared him to be wrongly detained by Russian authorties.
Gershkovich is imprisoned at the notorious Lefortovo prison, spending 90 per cent of his day cut off from the world in a small cell.
A Russian court on November 28 extended his pre-trial detention for another two months, and it is unclear when he will face trial.
Carlson asked Putin to clarify if Gershkovich was accused of working for the US Government or NATO – or just received classified information as part of normal journalistic work.
Putin first said ‘I don’t know who he was working for’, before claiming he was ‘working for the US special services, some other agencies’;.
‘But I would like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage,’ he said, grossly misusing the term.
‘He’s not just a journalist. I reiterate. He’s a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information.’
Putin refused to simply release Gershkovich when Carlson asked, saying Russia had ‘done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them’.
Ella Milman, mother of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and lawyer Tatyana Nozhkina leave after a court hearing to consider an appeal against Gershkovich’s detention
Gershkovich is imprisoned at the notorious Lefortovo prison, spending 90 per cent of his day cut off from the world in a small cell
However, he indicated the wrongfully jailed reporter could ‘in theory’ be swapped for an imprisoned Russian ‘if our partners take reciprocal steps’.
‘Special services are in contact with one another. They are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle this issue,’ he said.
‘We are willing to solve it but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.’
‘I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr Gershkovich, may return to his motherland.’
Putin said it ‘does not make any sense’ to keep him in prison in Russia, but wanted the US to ‘contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing’.
‘The talks are underway and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success,’ he said.
‘Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well. But we have to come to an agreement.’
Putin has repeatedly refused to release Gershkovich and another US citizen Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, who has been jailed in Russia since his 2018 arrest on espionage-related charges.
He insists they must be traded for something else, such as a Russian imprisoned in the US – as has been done twice in the past 18 months.
‘We’re not refusing to return them. We want to reach an agreement, and these agreements must be mutually acceptable and suit both parties,’ he said in December.
Pilot and convicted drug smuggler Konstantin Yaroshenko was released in April 2022 in exchange for Marine veteran Trevor Reed, who was accused of attacking police officers Russia in 2019.
WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was being held in Russia on drug smuggling charges, was exchanged in December 2022 for Russian warlord Viktor Bout, who was convicted of trying to kill US citizens on the behalf of Colombian paramilitaries FARC.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Labrov said in April 2023 that there were around 60 Russian citizens in US custody, 25 of them in federal prisons.