Donald Trump claims Putin will release US journalist Evan Gershkovich 'immediately' after election

Donald Trump has boasted Vladimir Putin will release US journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russian prison "immediately" if he wins the election.

The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter was detained in late March 2023 while on a reporting trip and has spent over a year in jail, with authorities routinely extending his time behind bars and rejecting his appeals. Last month, his pretrial detention was continued yet again — until June 30 — in a ruling that he and his lawyers later challenged.

A Moscow court of appeal rejected it. Gershkovich and his employer have denied the allegations, and the US government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Now former president Donald Trump has claimed Gershkovich will be released "almost immediately" if he wins in November because Vladimir Putin "will do that for me, not anyone else."

Trump claims the journalist will be released if he wins the election

He wrote on Truth Social: "Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!"

Analysts have pointed out that Moscow may be using jailed Americans as bargaining chips in soaring US-Russian tensions over the Kremlin’s military operation in Ukraine. At least two US citizens arrested in Russia in recent years — including WNBA star Brittney Griner — have been exchanged for Russians jailed in the US.

In December, the US State Department said it had made a significant offer to secure the release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, another American imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, which it said Moscow had rejected.

Officials did not describe the offer, although Russia has been said to be seeking the release of Vadim Krasikov, who was given a life sentence in Germany in 2021 for the killing in Berlin of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen descent who had fought Russian troops in Chechnya and later claimed asylum in Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, asked this year about releasing Gershkovich, appeared to refer to Krasikov by pointing to a man imprisoned by a US ally for “liquidating a bandit” who had allegedly killed Russian soldiers during separatist fighting in Chechnya.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for US News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. Daniloff was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s UN mission who was arrested by the FBI, also on spying charges.