As per several media reports, both of them are presently being moved to locations beyond Russian borders.
The terms of the prisoner swap stipulate that the US and its allies will send back prisoners in their custody to Russia.
US media outlets suggest that the Wall Street Journal reporter may arrive back in the United States as soon as Thursday. However, official confirmation from both the Kremlin and Washington regarding the exchange is still pending.
This speculation has grown in recent days amid reports key figures held in Russia had “disappeared” from jails.
As per the Reuters, Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British dissident, both jailed in Russia, have suddenly disappeared from view, their lawyers said a day earlier, after at least seven Russian dissidents were unexpectedly moved from their prisons in recent days.
Who is Evan Gershkovich and why was he arrested?
The Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, 32, was detained by the Russia while he was on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg in March 2023.
He is accused of “gathering secret information” on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility in the Sverdlovsk region that produces and repairs military equipment, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement, revealing for the first time the details of the accusations against him.
The reporter, his employer and the US government denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained. Russia’s federal security service, or FSB, alleged after arresting Gershkovich that he was acting on US orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to back up the accusations.
Former US Marine Paul Whelan
A former marine Whelan was jailed by Moscow on espionage charges, in prison. He was arrested in 2018 in Russia, Whelan was convicted of espionage in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years in a facility in Mordovia, a Russian region notorious since Soviet times for its penal colonies.
Both Whelan and the US government have denied that he is a spy.