Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich despite an appeal from Tucker Carlson.
“We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” Putin said, according to Carlson’s transcript of their interview released Thursday. “We are willing to solve it, but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.”
Carlson put a spotlight on Gershkovich’s plight at the end of a nearly two-hour interview with Putin in Moscow. The Kremlin chief faulted Gershkovich for attempting to obtain “classified” information in Russia last year.
“He’s a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information,” Putin said. “Yes, it is different, but still, I’m talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the U.S. authorities, wherever they are serving a sentence.”
Carlson emphasized that “the guy’s obviously not a spy.” The former Fox News host offered to bring Gershkovich home, but Putin implied that he wanted to make an exchange.
“Evan is a journalist, and journalism is not a crime,” the Wall Street Journal said Thursday evening after Carlson published his interview with Putin. “We’re encouraged to see Russia’s desire for a deal that brings Evan home, and we hope this will lead to his rapid release and return to his family and our newsroom.”
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Putin, for his part, alluded to the case of a Russian assassin who was convicted of killing, in 2019, a former Chechen insurgent in a crowded playground in Berlin.
“Some groundwork has been laid,” Putin said. “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 . … We want the U.S. special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing.”
