No ordinary arrest How reporter's long odyssey in Russian prisons played out

Evan Gershkovich was on a reporting trip deep in the Russian regions when the FSB came for him.

- Andrew Roth , Pjotr Sauer , Shaun Walker

The Wall Street Journal reporter was in Yekaterinburg when agents approached his table at a local bistro. They frogmarched him out of the restaurant and pulled his shirt over his head, witnesses said. The signal was clear: this was no ordinary arrest.

That began a nearly 500-day odyssey in Russia's notorious prison system for Gershkovich, the first reporter to be arrested and charged with espionage since the cold war. The Russian government said Gershkovich had been recruited by the CIA to collect information about the country's Uralvagonzavod tank company.

Gershkovich pleaded not guilty, and the Wall Street Journal as well as the Biden administration have strenuously denied the charges, calling Gershkovich a hostage and pawn in a larger geopolitical game. For his part, Vladimir Putin has barely hidden his true aim: to free a man named Vadim Krasikov, who was until today serving a life sentence for the assassination of a Chechen rebel commander in the Tiergarten, Berlin.

In his interview with Tucker Carlson this year, Putin described Krasikov as "a person who eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals, due to patriotic sentiments". But a little digging suggested Krasikov was probably an elite FSB assassin tasked with murdering Putin's opponents abroad. "Putin had become maniacal about getting Krasikov back; he really wanted Krasikov," a source told the Guardian this year. "It was a symbol that we don't abandon our people."

Krasikov was central to Putin's demands, and Gershkovich the most significant prisoner for the White House, but the ensuing year of negotiations pulled in hundreds of other people, including Russian political prisoners and Russian spies held abroad, negotiators on both sides, a Russian billionaire reportedly acting as broker in the exchange, as well as the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.