Who is Evan Gershkovich? The reporter falsely jailed by Russia at centre of US-Moscow prisoner exchange

In court, Evan Gershkovich would often crack a smile or laugh for the cameras from inside the glass-walled cage in which he was being held. One one occasion he made a heart shape with his hands and put it to his chest. A message to family, friends and the wider world, that the trumped-up espionage charges for which he was handed a 16-year sentence would not break him.

It is a fate he had seen many times, dissidents, critics and journalists jailed – but one that increased significantly in the wake of Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Gershkovich tweeted in July 2022 that summer that it had become “a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.” Less than a year later he was in prison himself, becoming the first US journalist to be accused of spying in Russia since the Cold War.

The 32-year-old was detained for just doing his job, a reporting trip for his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), to the city of Yekaterinburg – around 900 miles east of Moscow. A day later he was pictured being taken inside a Moscow courthouse, flanked by security personnel, wearing a mustard coat, its hood over his head.

The reaction was shift and vociferous, the arrest was denounced by the WSJ, the American government and many other leaders around the world. The calls were long and loud for him to be immediately released, but they were ignored by Moscow, who tried to claim that he had been caught red-handed with classified material. No such evidence has ever been produced into the public domain.

More than a year Gershkovich waited without a trial date, held in the notorious Lefortovo prison in Moscow, which has traditionally held Soviet dissidents. He was locked in a cell for 23 hours