Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter held in a Moscow prison on charges of espionage for the past 15 months, will finally benext week—meaning that if Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to free him in some sort of trade Gershkovich could be sentenced to up to 20 years and may serve some of that time in a gruesome hellhole far away from the Moscow detention center where he has till now been kept and has been able to routinely consult with lawyers.
Putin has said a few times that he would be amenable to trading Gershkovich under the right circumstances. In hisBout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” had served 11 years of a 25-year sentence when he was traded for Griner. Some critics denounced the trade as unequal, but, the judge who presided over Bout’s case back in 2011, said that it was fair.
Gershkovich’s case, of course, has been at the Kremlin all along. That could intensify the severity of his punishment—or accelerate his release date, depending, perhaps, on Putin’s