‘Pretty Badass’: Freed Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich Asked Captors For an Interview With Putin

(AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov, File)

Included in an extensive report on Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia and the developments that led to his release, announced Thursday, is the detail that the 32-year-old reporter actually asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for an interview before leaving prison.

Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 in Russia while working as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal . He was charged with espionage charges that United States authorities have entirely dismissed as fraudulent. As reported in the Journal’s coverage, Russia arresting Americans and leveraging them for prisoner swaps has been common under Putin. The paper had actually been reporting on “Russia’s hostage-taking spree” at the time Gershkovich was detained.

“It’s totally undercovered,” the reporter had told colleagues as he encouraged them to pursue investigations.

At the end of the Journal’s report from Joe Parkinson , Drew Hinshaw , Bojan Pancevski , and Aruna Viswanatha is the reveal that Gershkovich asked for a Putin interview as he filled out the final paperwork before his release. The release also included long-imprisoned American Paul Whelan , arrested in 2018 on charges the U.S. has maintained were baseless, and others.

From the Journal :

The Russian Federation had a few final items of protocol to tick through with the man who had become its most famous prisoner. One, he would be allowed to leave with the papers he’d penned in detention, the letters he’d scrawled out and the makings of a book he’d labored over. But first, they had another piece of writing they required from him, an official request for presidential clemency. The text, moreover, should be addressed to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

The pro forma printout included a long blank space the prison could fill out if desired, or simply, as expected, leave blank. In the formal high Russian he had honed over 16 months imprisonment, the Journal’s Russia correspondent filled the page. The last line submitted a proposal of his own: After his release, would Putin be willing to sit down for an interview?

Fellow journalists applauded and spread news of the move by Gershkovich, with CNN’s Phil Mattingly calling it “badass.”

Read the entire Journal report here .