The Russian authorities have released Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from prison.

The men were released as part of an inmate exchange with Moscow that involved around 20-30 prisoners.

Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 for espionage, which the United States claims is illegitimate. In July, he was sentenced to a 16-year prison term.

Whelan (54), has been in prison in Russia since 2018. He was sentenced to a 16-year jail term in 2020 for spying.

The US denies that he ever participated in espionage.

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian-British journalist who was jailed for dissident views in Russia. He has also been reported to have vanished from sight, leading some to speculate that he may be among those freed.

Kara-Murza (42), was arrested just hours after CNN broadcasted an interview in which he claimed that Russia is run by a “regime murderers”.

He was sentenced for 25 years in an Siberian prison in a small punishment cell that measured just 10 feet long by 5 feet wide.

The exchange was thought to include four Russians who were detained in America on charges of cybercrime, money laundering and smuggling.

The Moscow Times has reported that individuals who have recently disappeared from federal inmates database in America.

In previous prisoner exchanges, the Kremlin had pushed for Vadim Krasikov’s release. This led to speculation that he might be released.

This comes after Slovenian television N1 Slovenia reported earlier in the week on a potential deal.

Reports cited an exchange involving the US, Germany and Belarus.

If the reports of 30 or more prisoners being swapped are true, this would be the biggest prisoner exchange between the United States of America and Russia since the Cold War ended.

According to an anonymous source quoted by the Moscow Times, Russian authorities made “great efforts” to keep information within Russia as secret as possible up until the very last minute.

Recent developments include a Kremlin aircraft that flew into isolated Russian regions where political prisoners were being held.

The US government has stated repeatedly that it is committed to releasing both men who, according to them, were wrongfully imprisoned.

Gershkovich, the son of Soviet emigrants who settled in New Jersey and fluently spoke Russian, moved to Russia to work at The Moscow Times in 2017, before being hired by WSJ 2022.

The first US journalist to be arrested in Russia on spies charges since the Cold War.

Russian prosecutors claimed that Gershkovich gathered secret intelligence on orders from the US Central Intelligence Agency regarding a company which manufactures tanks to support the war of Moscow in Ukraine. Both he and his employer deny this.

On March 29, 2023 he was arrested by officers of the FSB, a security service, in a steakhouse located in Yekaterinburg – 1,400 km (1,400 miles) east of Moscow. Since then, he had been detained in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison.

Whelan was arrested by the police in Moscow in 2018, while attending a wedding of a friend.

He claims innocence and says the charges are fabricated.

The conditions that both men are facing behind bars is not well known. Whelan’s attorney said recently she has lost track of the location where Whelan was being held.

The family of the man who was allegedly attacked by a fellow inmate at the IK-17 prison camp in Mordovia, a remote location in Mordovia, told them that he had suffered a punch to his face as well as broken glasses.

US officials have accused Russia repeatedly of using Gershkovich or Whelan to bargain for a possible prisoner swap.

In negotiations to release Brittney Grinder, a US basketball player who had been detained for drug possession charges, Russia pushed hard for the release former Federal Security Service (FSB), colonel Krasikov.

Krasikov has been convicted for shooting dead a Georgian-born Chechen in a central Berlin Park in June 2019 in broad daylight.

In December 2021, he rode his bicycle up to the victim and executed him in Berlin’s Kleine Tiergarten Park. The German court described it as a’state contracted killing’