Trump Plays Up His Putin Ties in Claiming He Could Get Gershkovich Released

Former President Donald J. Trump claimed that, if re-elected, he could draw on his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin to press Russia into releasing Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in a Moscow jail for more than a year.

Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post that Mr. Gershkovich would be “released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” suggesting that his securing Mr. Gershkovich’s release was contingent on his defeating President Biden in November.

“Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added. Mr. Trump has frequently bragged about his positive relationship with Mr. Putin, whose strongman tendencies he has praised in interviews and on the campaign trail.

Asked about Mr. Trump’s post, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that “Putin has no contact with Donald Trump, of course.”

Mr. Gershkovich, who was arrested in March last year in Russia and charged with espionage shortly after, has been designated by the White House as “wrongfully detained,” a label signifying that the United States views him as the equivalent of a political hostage and believes the charges against him are fabricated.

Russia has not presented any evidence to support the spying charge, which Mr. Gershkovich and The Journal have vociferously rejected. The Biden administration has said it is working to secure his release.