Evan Gershkovich landed what he told friends he regarded as a dream assignment in Moscow in 2022 - reporting for a famous newspaper on one of the world's top stories, at the age of just 31.
But the new job turned into a hellish ordeal when Gershkovich became the first American journalist since the Cold War to be arrested in Russia with investigators accusing him of collecting sensitive military information for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a charge he and his employer denied.
During the 16 months he was held, The Wall Street Journal reporter became a Kremlin bargaining chip as President Vladimir Putin held out the prospect of exchanging him in a deal with Washington.
Initially kept in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo jail, a Russian court handed him a 16-year sentence in a rushed and secret trial in July 2024 after convicting him of trying to gather military secrets about a tank factory that is central to Russia's war machine.
His employer and the U.S. government said he was innocent and had been subjected to a sham trial. The Kremlin maintained he had been caught spying "red-handed."
Gershkovich's fate played out against the background of the war in Ukraine which, in the Kremlin's words, had plunged relations with the United States to "below zero".
On Thursday, the Turkish presidency said Gershkovich was being freed as part of a major east-west prisoner swap involving 26 people.
During his time in jail, Gershkovich, a literature and philosophy graduate, kept himself going by reading Russian classics such as Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate", an epic novel set during World War Two. In his cell, he followed events via a TV which showed only Russian state television channels.
In his regular correspondence with the outside world, Gershkovich poked fun at his life in jail. His chief request remained gossip from friends and colleagues.
One email account, set up by friends and colleagues to forward messages of support from wellwishers via Russia's prison correspondence system, received thousands of letters addressed to Gershkovich during his imprisonment.
His contact with the outside world was largely restricted to court hearings where he stood inside a glass cage and exchanged smiles with fellow reporters. He was allowed to speak in the courtroom when his parents Ella and Mikhail, former Soviet citizens who left for the United States in the late 1970...