Reporter's Notebook: From arrest to release, how VOA covered jailed American journalists
WASHINGTON — When it comes to hostile governments jailing journalists, happy endings are few and far between.
That's what made last week's historic prisoner swap between the United States and Russia so welcome for the press freedom community. Included among the 16 political prisoners freed from Russian custody were the wrongfully detained American journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva.
On Aug. 1, just hours before the journalists were expected to land at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, Kurmasheva's husband, Pavel Butorin, and the couple's teenage daughters Bibi and Miriam, spoke with VOA at The Wall Street Journal's Washington office.
"We've learned to keep our emotions and expectations in check. Even now, still, I'll believe it when I see her and when we hug her," Butorin said, sitting at a conference table.
It was my latest of several interviews with Butorin over the months since his wife's arrest in Russia, but already he seemed happier, lighter.
Butorin isn't the saccharine type, but the journalist's voice cracked when he spoke about the support for Kurmasheva and their family. "If anything brings a tear to my eye, I think it's that," he said.
The couple's daughters were sitting on a nearby couch. Bibi, the eldest at 16, futzed with the paper she had peeled off a water bottle. She spoke about the private tour President Joe Biden personally gave the families earlier that day.
"The White House was really cool," she said. But talking with her mom on the phone in the Oval Office was even better. "It was really nice to hear her voice and to hear that she's doing well," she said.
Butorin and Miriam laughed, saying they could barely remember what they spoke about with Kurmasheva because they were so overwhelmed.
But it didn't really matter, because later that humid day, not long after 11:30 p.m., a Bombardier jet landed outside Washington from Ankara, Turkey.
On board were Kurmasheva, who works at VOA's sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague; Gershkovich, who works at The Journal; and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine. Russia had jailed all three on charges that are widely viewed as baseless and politically motivated.
Dozens of journalists — plus Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and a flock of White House staffers — watched as Whelan descended the plane's steps, followed by Gershkovich, and finally Kurmasheva. It felt as if everyone watching held their breath in the moments between the plane door opening and the Americans walking out, one by one.
Each first spoke with Biden and Harris, then turned to their waiting families. Gershkovich embraced his mother. But that wasn't enough, so he lifted her off her feet.
Kurmasheva was next. Under a pitch-black sky and floodlights, she and her daughters ran across the tarmac to meet one another.
They had not embraced in more than a year. It was a period that weighed heavily on this tightly knit family.
The release of the Americans was a long time coming.
I started reporting on Gershkovich's case when he was arrested in March 2023 and falsely accused of espionage. I began covering Kurmasheva's case after Russian authorities detained her in October 2023, also on bogus charges.
Mornings often began with a quick internet search of their names for any developments in Russia while I was asleep. As VOA covered the court hearings, inevitable extensions of pre-trial detentions, and milestones marked in custody, I spoke regularly with those connected to the case, including Butorin and Paul Beckett, the Journal editor who led the newspaper's campaign to free Gershkovich.
Beckett had never met Gershkovich. When we spoke a few hours after the swap was confirmed, he was excited that the long-awaited meeting was close.
"Joy, gratitude, tears, smiles — everything at once," Beckett said. "I'm going to say [to Evan], 'Nice to meet you.'"
The journalists' drawn-out cases had rapidly concluded after Gershkovich's case and then Kurmasheva's were fast-tracked to convictions that both took place on July 19, in closed-door hearings.
For those watching, it seemed that a prisoner swap was imminent. Moscow had previously indicated it would be willing to exchange Gershkovich only after a conviction.
On Monday, July 29, VOA learned that a prisoner swap would likely take place that Thursday and would involve multiple political prisoners.
But everything was tightly under wraps and tinged with uncertainty. The full scope came into focus in the coming days.
Belarus, a close Russian ally, unexpectedly pardoned a German sentenced to death on terrorism charges. Then Slovenia announced the deportations of two Russians who were convicted of spying.
And the families and lawyers of several high-profile political prisoners in Russia, including Whelan and political activist and columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, began saying their loved ones had disappeared from their prisons.
Ahead of a scheduled briefing from the White House on Aug. 1, I spent a sleepless night monitoring Kremlin-backed media and exiled Russian outlets on Telegram. Before sunrise in Washington, I started tracking a plane from Moscow to Ankara that some reporters believed was transporting those involved in the swap.
But it wasn't until the embargoed White House National Security Council call at 8 a.m. that the U.S. confirmed Gershkovich and Kurmasheva would be coming home.
The White House made clear the group was still in Russian custody, in Russian airspace, and not safe. Reporting too early could put the whole deal in jeopardy, they said.
In this kind of situation, even if journalists weren't technically breaking an embargo because they had confirmed the news from separate sources, some media ethics experts said it likely would have been unethical to report because human lives were potentially at stake.
Bloomberg, however, reported.
Seeing the early reports, several news networks, including my team at VOA, were horrified. There was nothing to stop Russia from turning the plane around — and Russia has a history of reneging on prisoner swap deals at the last minute.
Prisoner swaps are inherently fragile, according to international human rights lawyer Jared Genser, who has helped release more than 300 political prisoners in his career.
"I really hold my breath in all these kinds of circumstances," he told me while the political prisoners were still en route to Ankara. "Until it's actually done and the exchange has actually happened, I really don't believe that it has been completed."
And Kelly McBride, of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told me, "We can't let our competitiveness undermine our ability to make decisions that benefit the common good."
The Guardian's media columnist Margaret Sullivan agreed. "It would have been absolutely horrible if early reporting had messed up this deal," Sullivan told me. "There are times when it's really important to be cautious, and this was one of them."
Gershkovich was Sullivan's editorial assistant when she was the public editor at The New York Times. We had spoken for the first time about Gershkovich about a month after his arrest.
The Journal also criticized the embargo incident. And Butorin told me on the day of the swap that he "didn't appreciate the leaks."
Bloomberg has since apologized and fired at least one reporter.
To Bill McCarren, a press freedom consultant at the National Press Club in Washington, the incident underscored the shortage of journalists who focus on press freedom issues.
"That level of enthusiasm, where you race to report early on stuff like this — give me that level of enthusiasm for the last year and four months for Evan. Give it to me for Alsu," McCarren told me on the day of the swap. "That's when I need you [the media] to be busting your ass and trying to beat everybody."
Shortly before midnight at Joint Base Andrews, I watched as the journalists and families reunited. As they did, the focus moved to those still left behind.
Gershkovich told one reporter he was heartened to see in the swap "not just Americans and Germans but Russian political prisoners." He added that there are many more in Russia who need help.
And Butorin has highlighted that three RFE/RL journalists are still wrongly jailed, including two in Belarus and one in Russian-occupied Crimea.
"Our daughters and I witnessed really a historic act of resolve and compassion, really, by the U.S. government and its allies, demonstrating that the free world places a higher value on human life and family," Butorin told me hours before his wife landed on U.S. soil. "It means a lot to us."