US journalist Evan Gershkovich has recounted how he realised he was being deliberately framed as a hostage by the Russian state when arrested by FSB agents in 2023. The Wall Street Journal's Moscow correspondent was detained at a restaurant in Yekaterinburg by masked security officials and subsequently sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges that he and his employer have always maintained were fabricated. When Gershkovich realised he wasn't being interrogated or tortured—tactics typically used against genuine spies—he understood he was being held as a "pawn in a greater game" to be exchanged for a Russian prisoner.

Gershkovich was arrested whilst meeting what he believed was a news source in Yekaterinburg, approximately 1,600 kilometres east of Moscow. He was held for 16 months in Moscow's Lefortovo jail before being freed in a high-profile prisoner swap deal that exchanged him for Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany. His case received significant international attention, with his image displayed on billboards in Times Square and then-US President Joe Biden declaring he had "no higher priority" than securing his release. The journalist now believes Russia strategically orchestrated the entire affair to obtain a valuable hostage it could exchange with minimal diplomatic consequences.