(NewsNation) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he talked to Paul Whelan, the former Marine who officials say has been wrongfully imprisoned in Russia since 2018, earlier this week.
“Yesterday, as it happens, I spoke on the phone with Paul Whelan,” Blinken said during an event Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Our intensive efforts to bring Paul home continue every single day, and they will until he and Evan Gershkovich and every other American wrongfully detained is back with their loved ones.”
Gershkovich is a Wall Street Journal reporter, also detained in Russia. The 33-year-old was arrested in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last year he was in contact with the U.S. about possibly swapping prisoners, but any agreement “must suit both parties.” This claim came after Russia rejected rejected the Biden administration’s offer aimed at securing the release of both Whelan and Gershkovich.
However, Paul Whelan’s brother, David, told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert he “didn’t really hear anything new” in what Putin was saying.
In a statement obtained by NewsNation, Paul Whelan wrote he has lost hope of ever returning home.
“My parents are quite elderly, and I have given up hope of seeing them again. Friends have moved on, relatives have passed away. The Russians have ruined my life. One that is destined to end in a slave labor camp, fraught with intolerable conditions for no reason other than a hatred of human rights and freedoms,” he wrote from prison.
