accused<\/a> by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of spying against Russia while he was reporting in Yekaterinburg.<\/p>\nCarlson said to Putin, \u201cI\u2019m just gonna ask you one last question and that\u2019s about someone who\u2019s very famous the United States probably not here. Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, he\u2019s 32, and he\u2019s been in prison for almost a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge story United States and I just want to ask you directly, without getting into details over to your version of what happened if as a sign of your decency, you\u2019d will be willing to release into us and we\u2019ll bring him back to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin responded, \u201cWe have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner,\u201d Putin said. \u201cHowever, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps. When I talk about the partners, I first of all refer to special services. Special services are in contact with one another. They are talking about the matter in question. There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Russian president added that he believed the American journalist was a spy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, you can give a different interpretations to what constitutes a spy. But there are certain things provided by law. If a person gets secret information and does that in conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage. And that is exactly what he was doing. He was receiving classified, confidential information, and he did it covertly,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe he did that out of carelessness or his own initiative. Considering the sheer fact that this is qualify this espionage. The fact has been proven as he was caught red handed when he was receiving this information. If it had been some farfetched excuse, some fabrication, something not proven, it would have been a different story then. But he was caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information. What is it then?\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that while he does not know who Gershkovich was allegedly working for, he \u201cwould like to reiterate that getting classified information in secret is called espionage. And he was working for the US special services, some other agencies. I don\u2019t think he was working for Monaco as Monaco is hardly interested in getting that information. It is up to the special services to come to an agreement. Some groundwork has been laid. There are people who, in our view, are not connected with special services. Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he was doing? I don\u2019t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers taken prisoner on the road and then drove his car over their heads. What kind of person is that? Can he even be called human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not. That is a different question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlson responded, \u201cI mean, that\u2019s a completely different. He\u2019s a 32-year-old newspaper reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not just a journalist. I reiterate. He\u2019s a journalist who is secretly getting confidential information,\u201d Putin asserted. \u201cYes, it is different, but still, I\u2019m talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the US authorities, wherever they are serving a sentence. He added, \u201cI do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland. But at the end of the day, it does not make any sense to keep him in prison in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the U.S. Special Services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing. We are ready to talk. Moreover, the talks are underway and there have been many successful examples of these talks crowned with success. Probably this is going to be crowned with success as well. But we have to come to an agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n