WSJ What’s News - Evan Gershkovich, Prisoner Swaps and Hostage Diplomacy: The Big Questions

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and 15 other prisoners were released from Russia and Belarus last week in the most complex prisoner swap since the Cold War. The exchange is being heralded as a triumph of international cooperation, but it is also painting a stark picture of Russia’s willingness to detain innocent Westerners to use as bargaining chips. WSJ’s Paul Beckett and Bojan Pancevski explain how autocrats are using hostage-taking to send a message, and the tactics some countries are considering as a means to stop it. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter.  Further Reading: Autocrats Wield Hostage-Taking as Potent Weapon Against West  The Dark Figure at the Center of Putin’s Prisoner-Swap Demands  How Germany Enabled a Historic Hostage Swap With Russia  Putin Rolls Out Red Carpet for Hackers, Smugglers and Spies Released in Prisoner Swap   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Hey What's News listeners, it's Sunday, August 4th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out

to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. And this week, securing the release of journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and 15 other prisoners from Russia and Belarus required the most complex prisoner swap in a generation, a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, and a vindication of months of intense public and behind-the-scenes efforts by the journal and others. But what message does the deal send to autocrats who increasingly embrace a strategy of hostage diplomacy? Let's get to it.

With me now to look at the forces required to pull off a prisoner swap of the sort we've just witnessed last week and consider what precedent it sets, I'm joined from New York by Wall Street Journal Assistant Editor Paul Beckett and from Berlin by Chief European Political Correspondent Bojan Ponchewski. Paul, let me start with you. You have been working to secure Evans' release now for more than a year. Broadly speaking, what's needed to negotiate a deal like this? From our perspective, we decided very early on that we were going to be very loud about Evans' predicament. And we were very gratified that so many others in the media and other

governments around the world and well-wishers everywhere supported it as a Gnat because we think it set a landscape for successful negotiations that obviously were so complex between the United States, Germany, Russia, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Belarus. That was an extraordinary achievement and we're very grateful to the Biden administration for doing that. But we really think that keeping them in the spotlight for 16 months and the amplification that we got from so many supporters also made a big difference.

And Bojan, you're far away from the U.S. and Washington where some of this whole push to free Evin played out, but Germany also was a party to this negotiation since that country had someone, Russian President Vladimir Putin, very much wanted back. His name is Vladimir Krasikov and he was serving a life sentence in Germany for having murdered a person, an enemy of the Russian state in broad daylight in a packed park in Berlin. So this was the key person in the whole deal. And Putin ever since Krasikov, this guy, this Colonel of the Secret Service FSB, murdered his victim in 2019. He kind of started signaling that he wants him to come home.

And he made these demands more or less official through various channels. And then with the string of arrests and convictions of American citizens in Russia, it sort of became apparent that the only way they can come out is for this guy to come out. And that was an enormous challenge for the American system because obviously this was a person who was jailed in a foreign country, an allied country, a very close ally and a friend. But nonetheless, it was very difficult to ask Berlin to release someone like that in

order for American citizens to be freed. So it was really quite remarkable. But I think that the key to unlocking this incredibly difficult process was always in Berlin. I spoke just a few minutes ago with Joe Parkinson, chief of our world enterprise team. And I asked him kind of about all the different forces that came to play here to to secure Evan's release and he said the bits that you see talked about in the press are just a small porthole into this world of people who are involved in this in unofficial and official capacities and as we sort of look at maybe why Evan was arrested I asked him if if that was

a coincidence that Evan had so many allies on his side or if in some ways that was something that was a factor perhaps in Russia choosing Evan in some ways to be detained. This is what Joe had to say. I want to play a clip. As sad and as awful as it sounds, this has become a marketplace. In a marketplace, assets, in this case people, have value. And the more valuable a person, i.e. the higher their profile, the more that the Russians or other countries that engage in this kind of hostage diplomacy will try to get or take in return. In the course of our reporting, we were told by people at the highest level who've reviewed the top intelligence on this matter,

that Evan was taken as a pawn. He was taken. And you can see over a five-year time cycle, Vladimir Putin ratcheting up the pressure and looking for people who have a higher profile to take to the table to try and bring back what he wanted. Paul, having been so close to this, what do you make of that? Well, it's very clear that Evan was not guilty of anything except doing his job for the Wall Street Journal, number one. So it's clear that the Russians made up all the allegations against him. And I know there is concern when swaps like this happen that really bad people

go back and innocent people come out and people fear an escalation. I think the Biden administration and the allied governments acted to prevent a series of travesties of justice, which is what had happened to the Americans who were in Russia. And that they made a decision and we're very grateful to them for it, to stop the continuation of those travesties, which would have amounted to Evan going to a penal colony for 16 years. The president made it pretty clear at Andrews Air Force base. He was asked about it and he said, look, we're not going to worry about who might be taken in the future when we have the opportunity to get out the people who have already been taken. And I'm sure they will work to free

the other Americans who are left behind, and we feel for them. I think the broader point, and the US government and the allied governments are very aware of this, is how do you find a way to deter the practice in the first place? They know perfectly well that the real goal is to remove the incentive for Russia and other countries that do this. And they're moving underway to do that. Some sort of NATO against arbitrary detention, it'll be a long time coming, but that's the kind of thing they want to set up so that Putin, when he makes these calculations

or anybody else says, you know, we used to do that, but it's not worth it anymore. We've got to take a very short break, but when we come back, we'll discuss the geopolitical messages sent by deals like last week's prisoner swap. Stay with us. Summer is like a cocktail. It has to be mixed just right. Start with a handful of great friends. Now add your favorite music.

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are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum 40% alcohol by volume. Bojan, putting Evan's arrest and the arrest of other foreigners in autocratic countries into some perspective for us, could you just spell out whether this trend of hostage diplomacy is becoming more common with time? It's definitely becoming much more common and increasingly targeted are American citizens because essentially once you've swapped someone, once you bought someone off, it's just going to multiply the theory that the more you do it, the more you embolden rogue regimes to to capture American citizens or other citizens is kind of playing out in front of us in real time.

The number of cases is not reducing, it's increasing and I think there's pretty clear trend. Even if that is the case and as you and I've heard others say each of these deals to resolve one of these possibly encourages the next one, it is important what's in the deal right and notable that in this case as far as we know it didn't include any additional sweeteners, for instance, the easing of sanctions, cash transfers, the normalizing of relations with a rogue government. How important is that as we evaluate the extent to which the deal to free Evan might affect

what happens in the future? As far as we know, it was a straightforward trade. This deal was obviously, in a way, truly a humanitarian intervention, but we'll see what the future brings. I mean, some nations have made it a policy not to negotiate with hostage takers. Nat. Paul, when you consider that states like North Korea, Iran, and Russia are increasingly taking hostages, I wonder what diplomatic tools the US has available to respond. What are America's diplomatic chips, so to speak, in responding to these actions, especially

since the US wouldn't just arrest people in this way? Yeah, I'd give the US great credit for actually having a policy of working to get their people back. I know all countries even do that. So I think what the US will try and persuade people to do is to say, listen, if an American is taken overseas arbitrarily just snatched to be a pawn, we need a whole armory of things to happen to that aggressor country. And if it's one of your people, we will respond in kind. Nat. And what is in that armory of tools available to a country like the US?

Richard. Well, that'll be up to the governments to decide, but I know the things that have been talked about, for instance. Let's say 30 countries signed up to respond if any one country's system was taken. They could do anything from demarcating the ambassadors all on the same day to send that message. They could go after commercial interests if they wanted to. They could all consider whether to put sanctions on. The point would be that there is a common response. Even during Evans' incarceration, you saw strong statements and a lot of support from Canada, from the United

Kingdom, from the Netherlands, countries that weren't so directly involved in the negotiations, but were there in support. And I think that's the kind of alliance building that the administration is keen to continue. Nat Senners Bojan, have you heard there in Germany, elsewhere from your reporting, any ideas about what else can be done to limit this trend? Bojan. When you are a rule of law democracy, like say Germany, where protection of human rights is extremely high, a country like this will never be reduced to taking Russian diplomats

or journalists or innocents of any kind hostage in order to exchange them. So it's very unlikely that they will be able to counter this rogue behavior unless they become rogue themselves. In most countries, it's pretty unlikely that they will harden up enough to be able to counter this. You have to think of these rogue actors like the high school bullies, you know, once you get bullied and you're permitted, then you'll get bullied again. It's as simple as that. It's kind of age old truth in international relations. I don't think it's going to be changed anytime soon. It's a bit of a depressing takeaway that we may need to get used to patterns like this potentially repeating themselves. Paul, as an editor, someone who over your career has

assigned reporters to travel around the country, around the world to get to the most important stories. When you hear from President Biden saying one of the lessons here is don't travel to dangerous countries, that obviously has consequences for journalism and so many other things. What do you make of that potentially being a lesson learned from all of this? I think the lesson learned from all of this is that journalism is a risky enterprise, and we are committed to comprehensive foreign coverage, and we're going to keep going. And that is a risky level. The Wall Street Journal has incredible security protocols for operating in hostile environments,

and this happened to Evan in spite of those protocols, not because of a lapse in them. So it's always going to be a risk. Journalists know that. We know that. We'll do everything to keep our people safe. And then if something bad happens, we'll do everything we possibly can to rectify it. Finally, in our closing seconds, what about this swap that actually has brought Evan home, concerns you the most as you look to the future and what gives you hope? It'd be very nice to never see it happen again and never see anything like it happen again and for the other Americans and other country citizens who are arbitrarily detained

in Russia to be let out. I mean, that will ultimately be the goal. The hope is, for me, the good part of all is when our colleague was in extreme distress, so many well-wishers and supporters and governments rose to speak for him when he was silent. That was an incredibly heartening thing to witness over 14 months. And you, Bojan? I'm overjoyed that our colleague is out. I'm very happy that the Russian dissidents have been rescued.

I'm very happy that the American and the German hostages have been released. It's a great day for us, for everyone. Given the situation, it was the best possible outcome. It's obviously at some level, you can imagine that rogue leaders and rogue operators are rubbing their hands in glee watching this on the television and thinking, oh, great, this is a good blueprint. We should try this at home. So, you know, remains to be seen. That was The Wall Street Journal's Bojan Ponchevski. Bojan, thank you so much. Bojan Pancevski Thanks for having me on. Luke Fargus And The Journal's Paul Beckett. Paul, thank you.

Paul Beckett Thanks, guys. Luke Fargus And that's it for What's New Sunday for August 4th. Today's show was produced by Charlotte Gartenberg. We got help from Michael Kosmides, Christina Rocca, Tadeo Ruiz-Sandoval, and deputy editors Scott Salloway and Chris Sinzley. I'm Luke Vargas and we'll be back on Monday morning with a brand new show. As always, thanks for listening.