MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov sometimes gets phone calls from the White House requesting the release of Paul Whelan, convicted in Russia of espionage, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained on espionage charges, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Sometimes Washington (the White House) calls Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, sending the same message: ‘release Paul Whelan,’ and now also journalist, as they call him, Evan Gershkovich," Lavrov noted in an interview with Tsargrad TV, published on the Foreign Ministry’s website on Wednesday.

According to him, "the second topic that is still afloat deals with the working conditions for Russian diplomats in the United States and American diplomats in the Russian Federation." "It is roughly the same issues that sometimes surface in contacts between us and European countries," Lavrov added.

According to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Gershkovich, acting at the behest of the US, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of Russian defense sector companies. In that regard, the reporter was detained in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Criminal charges have been filed against him under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Espionage"). As Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier, the journalist was caught red-handed. On March 30, Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court ruled that Gershkovich be held in custody until May 29.

Whelan, who holds US, British, Canadian and Irish passports, was detained by the FSB in Moscow on December 28, 2018, while on a spy mission. A criminal case was opened against him under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Espionage"). The Moscow City Court eventually sentenced Whelan to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.