Reporter Evan Gershkovich is greeted on the tarmac by his mother, Ella Milman, as President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris look on at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Aug. 2, 2024.
August 01, 2024
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The Conversation
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans were freed from Russia in a prisoner exchange on Aug. 1, 2024. In total, 24 prisoners, including 12 German nationals and eight Russians, as well as two children – who were not prisoners – were exchanged in Ankara, Turkey.
Some experts have called this kind of agreement “hostage diplomacy,” reflecting a growing trend of countries imprisoning foreigners on questionable grounds and using their potential release as political bargaining chips to achieve other goals.
What rules – informal or otherwise – help guide these sorts of delicate negotiations and eventual agreements? Amy Lieberman, a politics editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with William Butler, a specialist in Russian and international law, to better understand this surprise prisoner release deal.
Seven countries are involved and 26 people released, which is extremely unusual. Normally, there would be bilateral negotiations to release a small number of people.
It is important to understand that hostage and prisoner deals like this one are profoundly political exercises and not legal ones. There are no international treaties or international rules that determine how hostage and political prisoner releases should happen. All countries involved are at liberty to make the kind of deals they want to make, reflecting their own respective interests, on a case-by-case basis.
The real question is whether it would be better if there were some kind of international legal framework that would allow hostage and political prisoner releases to happen within a prescribed set of guidelines. In recent history, countries taking political prisoners and other foreigners hostage has become more common. A next step could be to set up international agreements that would institutionalize channels for hostage and prisoner release.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and two other Americans were freed from Russia in a prisoner exchange on Aug. 1, 2024. In total, 24 prisoners, including 12 German nationals and eight Russians, as well as two children – who were not prisoners – were exchanged in Ankara, Turkey.
Some experts have called this kind of agreement “hostage diplomacy,” reflecting a growing trend of countries imprisoning foreigners on questionable grounds and using their potential release as political bargaining chips to achieve other goals.
What rules – informal or otherwise – help guide these sorts of delicate negotiations and eventual agreements? Amy Lieberman, a politics editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with William Butler, a specialist in Russian and international law, to better understand this surprise prisoner release deal.
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