Skip to main content

Putin Will Free Jailed US Reporter Held In Russia "For Me": Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday he will use his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich freed from a Russian prison.

The assertion was ridiculed by the campaign of Democratic President Joe Biden, which cited Trump's frequent criticism of the news media as an "enemy of the people."

Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform that the journalist would be freed soon after the Nov. 5 US presidential election where he faces a rematch against Biden.

"Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY," Trump said.

"Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!"

Gershkovich was arrested in Russia in March last year on spying charges that he, his paper and the Biden administration have all strongly denied. He has spent more than a year in a Moscow prison, with no date set for a trial.

Trump did not refer to any contacts with Putin or say what grounds he had to believe that the Russian leader would release Gershkovich. The Trump campaign did not return requests for comment.

Asked about the post, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has "naturally not had contacts with Donald Trump."

The Biden campaign said the release of Gershkovich remains an urgent priority, and it accused Trump of using wrongfully imprisoned Americans as political props.

"Donald Trump doesn't give a damn about the innocent Americans unjustly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin," Biden campaign adviser TJ Ducklo said in an email.

"Trump has called journalists 'enemies of the people' and pledged to imprison reporters whose coverage he doesn't like - not all that dissimilar to what's happening right now to Evan Gershkovich in Russia."

Putin said in February that it might be possible to free the reporter in exchange for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for murder.

Peskov reiterated previous Kremlin statements that contacts with Washington regarding any exchange of prisoners must be conducted "in complete silence and absolutely discreetly. This is the only way they can be effective".

In December 2022 after months of talks, U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was released in a prisoner swap with Moscow in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Earlier that year, Russia freed former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed and the U.S. released Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko.

During his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump expressed admiration for Putin. In 2018, he refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking criticism at home.

Trump has also claimed he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to the White House, though he has not said how he would do this.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/sKFCwQV

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

UK In 'Diplomatic Contact' With Syrian Rebels After Bashar Al-Assad's Ouster

Britain's foreign minister said Sunday that London had established diplomatic contact with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group in Syria, which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad. They remain "a proscribed terrorist organisation, but we can have diplomatic contact and so we do have diplomatic contact, as you would expect", said Foreign Secretary David Lammy. "We want to see a representative government, an inclusive government. We want to see chemical weapons stockpiles secured, and not used, and we want to ensure that there is not continuing violence," he added. "So, for all of those reasons, using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and of course intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to." (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/ybLIfjx
Post a Comment
Read more

US Has Agreed To Send More Bombs, Warplanes To Israel: Report

The US in recent days authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel, two sources familiar with the effort said on Friday, even as Washington publicly expresses concerns about an anticipated Israeli military offensive in Rafah. The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post. Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The package comes as Israel faces strong international criticism over its continued bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza and as some members of President Joe Biden's party call for him to cut US military aid. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration's steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity. Bid...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK-Born Italian Teen To Become Catholic Church's First Millennial Saint

A London-born Italian teenager who spent his short life spreading the faith online will become the Catholic Church's first millennial saint, after the Vatican attributed to him a second miracle. Carlo Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15, was beatified four years ago after the Vatican ruled he had miraculously saved another boy's life. He will now become a saint after Pope Francis approved another miraculous act, an intercession on behalf of a young woman in Florence who suffered severe head trauma in July 2022. Carlo was born in London on May 3, 1991, to Italian parents, and moved with them to Milan as a young boy, where he grew up with a huge interest in computers. "He was considered a computer genius... But what did he do? He didn't use these media to chat and have fun," his mother Antonia Salzano said in an interview with Vatican News at the time of his 2020 beatification. Instead, "his zeal for the Lord" drove him to make a website on ...
Post a Comment
Read more