Evan Gershkovich prisoner swap was great news but it sets a worrying precedent for future hostage taking

Reporters Without Borders has welcomed the release of hostages by Russia, including Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal and Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. But it has stressed that: “Neither should have spent a single day in a Russian prison for doing their job … we emphasise that journalists are not targets and must not be used as political pawns in this way.”

I became acutely aware of this issue in the early 1990s when I worked at UK broadcaster ITN, alongside Jill Morrell. Morrell’s boyfriend, John McCarthy, a fellow journalist was held hostage in Lebanon for five years after being taken in Beirut in April 1986 while working as a producer for Worldwide Television News.

While Morrell was busy enough in her day job, she also fielded constant phone calls from the Foreign Office, lawyers, go-betweens, campaigners and advisers. The prime minister for most of this time was Margaret Thatcher who was vocal in upholding a policy of “no negotiations with terrorists”. Progress in securing McCarthy’s release was therefore glacial, but Morrell and her campaign kept the fires burning and he was eventually released in August 1991.

It was thought that McCarthy and more than 100 other hostages had been taken by groups connected to Iranian interests who were angry at foreign policy decisions taken by the captives’ governments. The hostages were intended as eventual bargaining tools for future deals and concessions on the world stage.

But journalists are not pawns to be bartered and haggled over. So many in the trade will now ponder if this latest hostage and prisoner swap will mean that journalists will increasingly be seen as handy small change for future negotiations. There must be foreign correspondents living abroad, including in Russia, Iran, China or elsewhere who will ask themselves if such deals render their postings increasingly risky.

In all, the deal involved 26 prisoners. The west received a mixture of journalists, business people and a group of Russian dissidents. Meanwhile, according to The Economist, Russia got a collection of “assassins smugglers, hackers and the deep-cover agents known as ‘illegals’.”

One person stands out as a key prize for Vladimir Putin – Vadim Krasikov, a colonel in the Russian secret service (FSB), who was in jail in Germany for killing a former Chechen rebel commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, in Berlin in 2019. There is chatter that perhaps two Germans – Kevin Lick and Rico Krieger – had been targeted as leverage for the German prisoner swap.

Interestingly, Lick, who was arrested last year on treason charges, is a dual German-Russian citizen. Kurmasheva is a US-Russian journalist and Vladimir Kara-murza has British-Russian dual nationality. Kara-Murza worked for the BBC between 2004-05, and later for the UK-based Russian Investment Review before entering politics in Russia. The Pulitzer prize winner also holds US permanent residency. And Gershkovich’s parents were émigrés from the Soviet Union.

I doubt this is just a curious aside as Iran and China also have a track record of jailing dual citizens when they visit their countries of origin to see their families. These have included British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was held for six years in Tehran and Australian-Chinese journalist, Cheng Lei, who was imprisoned for three years in Beijing.

Pawns in a sinister game

Journalists are particularly useful, because when they write unflattering articles about the regime they can be arrested and stashed away in case they might be useful due to a new geopolitical situation. Another tactic is simply to expel them in front of the world’s media. This happened most recently to former BBC Russia correspondent Sarah Rainsford, who was expelled from Russia in 2021.

Rainsford was a thorn in the side of Russian politicians, having interviewed many leading dissidents over the years. But she believes that she was targeted as a tit-for-tat for the earlier expulsion of a so-called Russian “journalist” working for the state news agency Tass. According to Rainsford, writing in The Telegraph a source at the time had called him an “undeclared Russian agent”.

Interviewed in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on August 1, Rainsford said she could find no record of this man’s work as a reporter.

The BBC has had its personnel sent packing from Moscow before. In 1985, Tim Sebastian was the BBC’s Moscow correspondent before he was expelled along with 24 other British nationals, a mix of embassy staff and reporters from the Observer, Daily Mail, the Telegraph and Reuters.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has also welcomed the release of the reporters. But at the same time it has called on Russia “to release all jailed journalists and end its campaign of using in absentia arrest warrants and sentences against exiled Russian journalists”. Unfortunately, these Russian journalists have little currency worth an exchange and sentencing exiled journalists comes cheap.

On learning of Gershkovich’s release, Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, thanked the US president, Joe Biden, for his persistence in bringing the paper’s reporter home. But she also called for action to stop “a quickening cycle of arresting innocent people as pawns in cynical geopolitical games”. She said the only way was to “remove the incentive for Russia and other nations that pursue the same detestable practice”. However, she didn’t offer a solution.

On his arrival in Maryland, Gershkovich told journalists he was “really touched” at the release of some Russian “political prisoners”, having spent time in jail alongside many people facing a similar plight. He added that he plans to “do something” about those remaining in custody “in the next weeks and months”.