The White House said last night that there have been discussions about the possibility of a prisoner exchange for Evan Gershkovich, “but those discussions have not produced a clear path to a resolution.”
It comes after media workers around the world marked 100 days since Russia arrested the Wall Street Journal reporter.
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Earlier this week, the Kremlin said that certain contacts between Russia and the United States on the prisoner exchange are ongoing, but that they must be carried out “in complete silence.”
“As we have said before, there remain certain contacts on this subject, but we do not want to make them public in any way. They must be carried out and continue in complete silence,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
Yesterday marked 100 days since the Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested while on assignment in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains.
Arrested on “suspicion of espionage”, the correspondent was transferred to the notorious Lefortovo prison near Moscow, where he has been held in solitary confinement ever since, without trial.
His appeal against the extension of his pretrial detention until the end of August was dismissed.
The US ambassador has been allowed to visit him only twice during his imprisonment.
Gershkovich’s health and spirits are reportedly holding up well, yet the last 100 days spent in a small cell will have passed with agonizing slowness for a young man simply doing his job.
Russian authorities have offered no evidence that Gershkovich was doing anything more in Yekaterinburg than collecting information to share with his newspaper’s readers.
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