Evan Gershkovich tells of release and says Putin was misled about him
Evan Gershkovich has described learning three weeks before his release that a swap was happening and said he believes Vladimir Putin was misled into thinking he was a spy.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story.
The American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was freed from a Russian jail in a prison swap, has described the moment he learned he was going home 16 months into a 16-year sentence. In an interview, he said his lawyer came to him and told him she thought the swap was happening. He was standing and fell down onto a chair because he could not believe the news. Soon afterwards, he said, came a joyful feeling.
Gershkovich said he found out about the swap three weeks before it happened. He described prison time as bizarre. Once he settled into a rhythm, time began to go quickly because he was in a routine. But when he knew he was about to be free, the wait became excruciatingly long. Each day felt like weeks, and the three weeks felt like three months.
He also said he thinks Vladimir Putin was misled by his own officials into believing he was a spy. Gershkovich said Putin has built a system over the years that misinforms him. He does not use a smartphone or the internet, and he gets briefings printed in leather-bound folders that he reads every morning. He trusts his security services over others. Before his arrest, Gershkovich had worked on reporting about how Putin gets information from the front and makes decisions.
Gershkovich said those services are incentivised to misinform Putin because people are scared of giving him bad news. In his case, he believes they crafted a story that he was a spy and handed it to Putin, who believed it. He said that, filtering what he was doing through Putin's worldview, and knowing that the Russian state uses journalists as cover for spies, he could see how Putin might believe it.
Gershkovich has maintained that he is not a spy but a journalist, and he wanted to make that clear. The interview covered his release and his view of how the Russian president came to see him.
On screen
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Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, grouped by how many channels reported each one. Select a dot to see the source excerpt.
| Claim |  |
|---|---|
| Only on one channel | |
| Gershkovich said he learned about the prisoner swap three weeks before his release and that the wait felt like three months. | |
| Gershkovich said he thought Russian officials invented false espionage allegations against him and that Putin accepted them. | |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
Sky News led its Gershkovich coverage with his interview about the release, using his own words to carry the emotional and political angles. It focused on his shock at learning of the swap, the long final three weeks, and his claim that Putin was misled into thinking he was a spy. The segment also trailed a longer interview for later, then moved to an unrelated Royal Navy spying case.
- “My lawyer came and told me that she thinks the swap is happening and I was standing and I fell down onto the chair, basically, because I couldn't believe the news.”
- “I think they kind of crafted this story that I'm a spy and handed it to him and he believed it.”
- “I found out about the swap three weeks before it happened.”
Broadcast Timeline
News broadcasts tracked for this story, in time order.