Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy met with jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on Monday, a State Department spokesperson said, in her third such visit since his March detention on espionage charges he denies.
Russia has said Gershkovich was caught trying to obtain military secrets while on a trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, but has provided no details supporting that assertion.
The State Department has designated Gershkovich and Whelan as wrongfully detained and described the charges against both men as baseless.
Whelan, a former U.S. Marine detained in Moscow in 2018, is serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on espionage charges.
Russia has agreed in the past to high-profile prisoner exchanges with the United States, most recently last year when American basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced in Russia on a drug charge, was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trafficker convicted in the United States.
U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point in more than six decades following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.