Posted on 03/30/2023 6:34:10 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called on Russia Thursday to release a Wall Street Journal reporter detained on espionage charges — and suggested the Biden administration’s prisoner swap to rescue WNBA star Brittney Griner may have encouraged Moscow tyrant Vladimir Putin.
”Russia needs to release this journalist,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) told Fox News Digital at an event on Capitol Hill. “It just shows what Putin is doing.”
“And it also shows, when the president pays ransom, they’ll go after and take more Americans,” the speaker said of the detention of Evan Gershkovich.
In December, the US exchanged convicted international arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as “the Merchant of Death,” for Griner’s release from a Russian penal colony.
Griner had been held for 10 months since her arrest on Feb. 17, 2022 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for allegedly smuggling vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her luggage.
McCarthy said Gershkovich, a US citizen whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, had a right to be working in Russia.
“This is a journalist who has a right to do their job. And for Putin to try anything else, it shows how deadly he is,” McCarthy said, adding that what the Russian leader “is doing is against every realm of the law.”
The Journal said Gershkovich, 31, lost contact with his editors while on assignment in the city of Yekaterinburg.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Biden wanted Griner over Paul Whelan.
Biden has no respect for media lap dogs. Why should he?
Who exactly does Biden respect in the end?
Secondly, a journalist, lap dog or not, Whelan, etc - anyone is a better swap than Griner.
Trade Russia Griner for the journalist.
Don’t put ‘Griner’ and ‘snatch’ in the same Headline.
Except for the weather, it seems to be a fairly nice place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg
As bad as it is, I suspect Biden respects Griner more than a reporter.
“alleging that he had ‘collected information classified as a state secret about the activities of a Russian defence enterprise’”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65121885
“Press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders said he had gone to Yekaterinburg to cover Russian mercenary group Wagner, which has taken part in some of the heaviest fighting in eastern Ukraine.”
I’m gonna laugh if Putin offers to trade him for Julian Assange.
“On 12 April 2018, investigative Russian journalist Maksim Borodin was found badly injured at the foot of his building, after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in Yekaterinburg. He was hospitalized in a coma and died of his injuries three days later on 15 April. In the weeks before his death, Borodin gained national attention when he wrote about the deaths of Wagner PMCs in the battle with US-backed forces in eastern Syria in early February, that also involved U.S. air-strikes. Throughout February and March, Borodin interviewed relatives and commanders of Wagner Group PMCs, and attended their funerals in the town of Asbest.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group
It only shows a few paragraphs:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/30/the-kremlin-escalates-its-war-on-truth
Journalist know the risk in reporting from other nations....the guy took his chances.
“said he had gone to Yekaterinburg to cover Russian mercenary group Wagner”
“(Wagner) Headquarters Saint Petersburg, Russia”
Seems to me that the WSJ failed to give him a map of Russia, since the cities 1500 or so miles apart.
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