Putin: Russia, US engaging in dialogue on jailed Americans
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Moscow is in dialogue with the United States on the issue of bringing home jailed Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, and the Kremlin hopes to “find a solution,” even though “it’s not easy.”
Putin spoke about Whelan and Gershkovich during his year-end news conference in response to a question about a recent offer the Biden administration made to secure the pair’s release. The U.S. State Department reported it earlier this month, without offering details, and said Russia rejected it.
“We have contacts on this matter with our American partners, there’s a dialogue on this issue. It’s not easy, I won’t go into details right now. But, in general, it seems to me that we’re speaking a language each of us understands,” Putin said.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, speaking to reporters in Washington, said the U.S. has “put multiple offers on the table,” including “one significant offer that we made as recently as a few weeks ago.”
“We have seen those offers rejected every time by the Russian government,” he said.
Miller said Washington would welcome Russia engaging seriously in talks that would lead to the release of Gershkovich and Whelan but that “so far we’ve seen them refuse to take us up on our proposals.”
Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, has been jailed in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage-related charges that both he and the U.S. government dispute. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Gershkovich, a Wall
Street Journal reporter, was detained in March while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,200 miles east of Moscow. He was accused of espionage — Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged that the reporter, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
Gershkovich and the Journal deny the allegations, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Russian authorities haven’t detailed any evidence to support the espionage charges.
Putin’s remarks Thursday came in the first formal news conference that Western media were allowed to attend since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The highly choreographed session, which lasted over four hours and included questions from ordinary Russians about things like the price of eggs and leaky gymnasium roofs, was more about spectacle than scrutiny.
Emboldened by what he described as battlefield gains and flagging Western support for Ukraine, Putin appeared relaxed and confident, saying there would be no peace until Russia achieves its goals, which he says remain unchanged after nearly two years of fighting.
He said that a steady influx of volunteers means there is no need for a second wave of mobilization of reservists to fight in Ukraine — a move that was deeply unpopular. He said there are some 617,000 Russian soldiers there, including around 244,000 troops who were mobilized a year ago to fight alongside professional forces.
Putin highlighted Russia’s successes in Ukraine and the flagging support by Kyiv’s allies.
“Ukraine today produces nearly nothing, they are trying to preserve something but they don’t produce practically anything themselves and bring everything in for free,” he said. “But the freebies may end at some point and apparently it’s coming to an end little by little.”
Putin noted “an improvement in the position of our troops all along” the front line.
“The enemy has declared a big counteroffensive, but he hasn’t achieved anything anywhere,” he added.