WASHINGTON, May 23. /TASS/. The US State Department is aware of Paul Whelan's recent call for him to be released from his detention in Russia ‘a little bit more quickly’, but cannot yet provide any new information about its work in this regard, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
"As you know, as we've spoken before, we oftentimes have found that it is not conducive to our efforts <…> to speak about the details of those efforts [to return wrongful detainees home]. So we tend to, for the most part, keep them confidential. I will say that I did see Paul Whelan's comments in the interview that was released over the weekend and I can assure him, and I can assure his family members that we have no higher priority than returning him safely home to the United States. And the [US] Secretary [of State Antony Blinken] continues to work on it, other people in this building [the State Department], other people throughout our government, continue to engage on it and the same goes same holds true for Evan Gershkovich," he said at a regular briefing.
Miller did not respond to a question about whether the State Department plans to summon Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov in connection with Moscow's May 19 denial of the US Embassy's request for a consular visit to Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent arrested in Russia for espionage. "I don't have any announcements to make. And for the most part, as I've said, usually, we found that it's counterproductive in such a delicate situation as returning wrongfully detained detained Americans home to make public all of the work that we're doing to secure their release," the diplomat pointed out.
Whelan and Gershkovich cases
Whelan, who holds US, Canadian and Irish citizenship, as well as UK citizenship, was detained while conducting a spy raid on December 28, 2018, by Russian FSB officers in a room of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. Investigators initiated a criminal case against him under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (espionage). The Moscow City Court found Whelan guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in a strict regime colony. In an interview with CNN on May 21, Whelan called on US President Joe Biden to "follow through with his promises and commitments" and return him to the United States. According to the Center for Public Relations of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Gershkovich, "acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex." In this connection, the journalist was detained in Yekaterinburg at the end of March; criminal proceedings were initiated against him under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (espionage). According to Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Gershkovich was caught red-handed. Moscow’s Lefortovo court has sanctioned his arrest until May 29.