Evan Gershkovich returns from Russia, shining a light on the monstrous side of Putin
Welcome home, Evan!
After almost 500 days of unjust captivity, The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich was released from a Russian prison Thursday, as were fellow prisoners including Paul Whelan, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Alsu Kermasheva and 12 others in a massive multinational prisoner swap with Russia.
This is a rare event to celebrate in an increasingly chaotic world — a moment of true liberation.
Gershkovich and Kermasheva are journalists, Kara-Murza a critic of the Ukraine war and Whelan a former Marine.
Not criminals or spies or other malefactors.
All four, sad to say, were clearly being held as bargaining chips in Vladimir Putin’s power struggle with the United States.
And that brings us to the darker side of the release.
Here’s the latest on former Russian prisoner Evan Gershkovich
It comes, as was expected, at an enormously high cost.
Washington traded three prisoners back to Russia: Roman Seleznev, Vladislav Klyushin and Vadim Konoshchenock.
All are crooks of the highest order: a cyber criminal, a stock fraudster and an arms smuggler, respectively.
Another prisoner, not held in the US but released under the deal, was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian operative hitman serving a life sentence for the murder of a Chechen dissident in Germany.
In other words, Putin snatches innocent Americans and others off the streets and locks them away as potential trades for some of the worst people in the world.
Such was the case with the swap of arms dealer Viktor Bout for unjustly imprisoned US women’s basketball star Brittany Griner.
Aside from the high cost of the deal, it may inspire other bad actors to try the same thing against US citizens.
Yet this truly is a case where there are no easy answers.
Yes, Americans (and citizens of other countries at odds with Putin) can avoid Russia and other hostile nations, but that won’t address the problem itself.
Sanctions, as the world has seen, only go so far.
Still, projecting strength and inspiring fear in our enemies — something President Biden has tragically failed to do — can go a long way toward deterring such hostage-taking.
Meanwhile, cheer Evan’s homecoming, along with the others freed, and let the episode serve as a reminder of what the United States, NATO and Ukraine face as they stare down Putin.
