US dialogue with Russia on prisoner swap "irregular", says Blinken

The United States and Russia are engaged in a dialogue on prisoner swap, but the talks are irregular, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Fox News in an interview.

"The dialogue is irregular. We have been in contact. We remain in contact through our embassy [in Russia]," he said in response to a corresponding question.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that a special channel was set up under an agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden after their meeting in Geneva in June 2021 to discuss detained Russian citizens in the US and detained American citizens in Russia. "I won't open a big secret if I tell you that this channel was not intended to involve journalists and was not intended to publicly expose certain situations in the interests of putting pressure on the ongoing serious professional negotiations," the top Russian diplomat told reporters.

For his part, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said in April that about 100 Russians are currently detained in the United States.

US authorities have recently been actively seeking to swap Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is in Russian custody, and Paul Whelan, who was convicted of spying in Russia. According to the Centre 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. The Lefortovo court in Moscow has sanctioned his arrest until May 29.

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. The Moscow City Court found Whelan guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in a strict regime colony.