Russia releases WSJ journalist and former soldier in major prisoner swap

Russia has released Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan as part of a large prisoner exchange between Russia and the US.

According to Bloomberg's sources, Gershkovich and Whelan are currently on their way to destinations outside of Russia.

As part of the arrangement, the US and its partners will also hand over the prisoners they are holding to Russia.

More information on the swap has not yet been revealed.

In recent days, the media have noticed signs of a potential large prisoner swap between several Western countries and Russia and Belarus. In particular, it has been reported that the United States, Germany, Slovenia and the United Kingdom are involved in this potential swap.

In particular, Paul Whelan, a former US Marine, Gershkovich, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian dissident, imprisoned in Russia, disappeared from sight on Wednesday, their lawyers said.

The trial of a pair of spies from Russia has ended in Slovenia, with media reports that they are being taken for an exchange.

Self-proclaimed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has decided to pardon German citizen Rico Krieger, who was sentenced to death for supposedly working for the "Ukrainian special services". The reasons for this step were not reported, but Krieger's pardon is also linked to the prisoner swap.

TASS, a Kremlin-aligned Russian news outlet, reported that information about Russians Alexander Vinnik, Vladislav Klyushin, Vadim Konoshchenko, and Maxim Marchenko had disappeared from the public electronic database of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, which allows the establishment of prisoners' places of detention.

Moscow has also previously made it clear that it wants to secure the exchange of Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the murder of a former Chechen commander.