Putin is not currently interested in Western media interviews, Kremlin says

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin is not currently interested in granting an interview to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was freed from Russian prison last month, nor with any other Western media outlets, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Gershkovich, who was convicted in Russia of espionage charges which he, his newspaper, and Washington strongly denied, asked the Kremlin leader for an interview as he was being released in a major East-West prisoner swap on Aug. 1, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Asked on Monday if there was an answer to Gershkovich's request, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "So far, we are not interested in such an interview.

"In order for there to be an interview with foreign media, and a specific one at that, we need to have an occasion. So far we don't see such an occasion."

Many Western journalists have quit Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Gershkovich, who was based outside Russia but continued to travel to the country, was arrested in March 2023 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip.

The first U.S. journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War, Gershkovich, was jailed for 16 years in July after a court found him guilty of gathering secret information on the orders of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency about a company that manufactures Russian tanks sent to Ukraine.

In February, Putin gave a rare interview to U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson, in which he said Moscow was prepared to fight for its interests "to the end" but had no interest in a wider war.

(Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)