The US-Russia prisoner swap shows how journalists risk being used as geopolitical bargaining chips

The photo of returning prisoners in an American plane, all grinning from ear to ear, says it all: the joy, the relief and the success of an incredibly complicated mission.

The freeing of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, former US Marine Paul Whelan and a host of others is the biggest prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War.

In all, 26 people from seven different countries were freed in a mindbogglingly complex agreement that took years to negotiate. They included 16 imprisoned in Russia: the three Americans, a host of Russian political prisoners, and a 19-year-old Russian-German national jailed for taking photographs of a Russian military base.

In return, eight Russians were also released – the most notorious among them, Vadim Krasikov, a colonel in the Federal Security Service jailed in Germany for murdering a former Chechen rebel in Berlin in 2019.

Freedom for those unjustly imprisoned is indisputably wonderful news, even if it is way overdue, and the Biden administration deserves credit for its work in negotiating the deal. But this case could also set up an international precedent: journalists can be used as geopolitical bargaining chips.

Journalists as leverage

Gershkovich had the highest profile of those detained by Russia. From the day the journalist was arrested in March 2023 on espionage charges, it was clear the only way out would be through some kind of negotiation.

From the outset, Russia failed to produce any evidence to validate their claims that he was a spy and not a highly competent journalist simply doing his job. And in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson: the special services are in contact with one another. They are talking […] I believe an agreement can be reached.

Because of their role, foreign correspondents are tempting fodder for governments looking for easy victims to use as leverage. Reporters carry cameras and notebooks, talk to political opponents and gather information in ways that are easily presented as espionage.

They are generally high-profile, working for companies with the ability to pressure their own governments to make deals. And their arrest sends a chilling message to other journalists, both local and foreign: challenge the official narrative at your peril.

This was the case with Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was detained in China for “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”. The Washington Post’s Tehran Bureau Chief Jason Rezaian was imprisoned in Iran, and the Al Jazeera Three (including myself) were detained in Egypt on terrorism charges.

But this deal also makes it more likely that in future, journalists and other civilians will be caught and traded between governments as bargaining chips.

Russia has got what it wanted: the return of what The Economist colourfully described as, “assassins, smugglers, hackers and the deep-cover agents known as ‘illegals’.”

The United States, then, has to live with the fact it helped free people serving time for crimes as severe as murder.

How do governments navigate this?

It is an almost impossible dilemma for governments trying to free innocent detainees. Do they stand firm and refuse to negotiate, risking anger at home for abandoning their own nationals? Or do they do a deal as the US did, and risk more detentions and more negotiations in future?

While the deals are impossibly complex, the long-term solution lies in a straightforward calculus: the price of detaining foreign hostages must ultimately be made higher than the value those hostages represent as prisoners.

The Canadian government has an idea that might just help. In 2021, in typically awkward diplomatic language, it launched, “The Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations”.

In simple terms, the declaration is creating a coalition of states committed to stopping the practice. Currently, it is a rather bland set of bullet points expressing “grave concern about the use of arbitrary arrest or detention by States to exercise leverage over foreign governments, contrary to international law”. It also reaffirms “the fundamental importance of the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, (and) respect for human rights […]”

But behind it lies the seed of a potentially powerful strategy. If enough governments agree to collectively act against any state that grabs a foreign hostage, it raises the price of keeping them while avoiding the need to start one-on-one negotiations.

Those actions don’t need to be dramatic. Placing the status of a hostage at the top of the agenda of every diplomatic meeting is a good start. Making the issue a point of friction in trade deals is another. So too is making visas difficult for official visits.

No single action needs to be expensive for those countries that are part of the coalition, but for a rogue state holding hostages, all those points of pressure add up to make the practice more trouble than it is worth.

The idea can’t guarantee there will never be another innocent like Gershkovich or Whelan unjustly imprisoned for political leverage, but it might reverse an awful trend. As Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly declared:

Hostage diplomacy is an unacceptable and abhorrent practice. It threatens international peace and security and contravenes international law. It inflicts immeasurable harm on victims and their friends and families. It must stop.