It was a headline that many American journalists yearned to see, within the place they most wished to see it. Unfold throughout the Wall Road Journal’s homepage on Thursday, in giant font, the phrases: “WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich Is Free.”

After I first heard the information that Evan was being launched from Russian captivity in an elaborate worldwide prisoner swap, my eyes crammed with tears of reduction. However my feelings have been combined as a result of I knew how unjustly he had been accused of espionage and the way absurd his latest conviction was.

I knew, too, that these 70 weeks in jail could be time that this younger man couldn’t reclaim – and that these lengthy months of concern and uncertainty would hang-out him. I additionally knew that the prisoner change that made this attainable was removed from best. As CNN’s Matthew Probability put it, it was, on no account, a “like for like” swap, however moderately an change of criminals for innocents caught up in Vladimir Putin’s power-hungry designs.

It’s an enormous geopolitical story. And for me, it’s additionally private.

I labored intently with Evan a number of years in the past after I was the New York Occasions public editor, or reader consultant, and he was my editorial assistant. Our “division” within the Manhattan newsroom was made up of simply us two, so we talked all through every day about our work – what readers have been upset about, which complaints to deal with, how to reply to others. He bought first crack on the 500 or so emails that arrived each week, sorted via them and capably made suggestions to me.

As a result of Evan – then in his 20s – is barely youthful than my son and barely older than my daughter, I felt an nearly parental bond, and was pleased to suggest him when the Wall Road Journal’s Moscow bureau was contemplating his utility. I knew that the Journal would get a gifted, hard-working and idealistic younger journalist; he’s additionally a fluent Russian speaker with a deep information of the nation as a result of his mother and father had emigrated from the Soviet Union to the US earlier than he was born. He had labored on the Moscow Occasions earlier than being employed by the Journal.

I additionally instructed the Journal’s hiring editor that Evan is a pleasant particular person – gregarious, humorous and simple to get together with.

All of this deepened my outrage when he was arrested below false pretenses in early 2023. The concept that Evan was being charged as a spy was ridiculously off base – clearly one thing dreamed as much as justify treating him as a hostage and a pawn. And seeing grim photographs of him over the months in Russian custody and in court docket made me surprise if he would ever be launched. Simply weeks in the past, he was convicted and given a protracted jail sentence.

So, his launch – together with that of the previous US marine Paul Whelan and others – is a triumph in some ways. It’s a testomony to the Biden administration’s skill to work with America’s allies, notably Germany, to seek out settlement on the change. It’s additionally a testomony to the admirable method that the Wall Road Journal workers and plenty of others saved Evan’s identify within the information in order that his state of affairs stayed within the public consciousness.

Nevertheless it’s additionally, sadly, proof of how effectively it really works for Putin to grab up harmless folks and make political hostages of them. He bought what he wished.

Evan has misplaced greater than a yr of his life. Nobody can know what the long-term results might be on his psychological and emotional well being, although his cheerful disposition and his robust relationships with family and friends will assist his restoration.

“Right this moment, their agony is over,” Biden stated on Thursday as the previous prisoners headed residence. I’m not so positive. The worst of it is over, however scars will stay, as my former Washington Submit colleague, Jason Rezaian, wrongly convicted of espionage in Iran in 2015 and held captive for greater than a yr, can attest. He spoke in a latest interview about political hostages being handled as bargaining chips or, primarily, property. “The dehumanizing impact” on him and others, he stated, can’t be overstated.

Evan, too, will cope with that. I hope that finally he will get again to his chosen work: the reporting that he was doing so skillfully when he was kidnapped and made a political hostage.

There’s proof he’ll. The Journal reported on Thursday that, in his last bureaucratic paperwork (a request for clemency), Evan wrote, in formal Russian, a request: would Putin be keen to take a seat down for an interview?

There isn’t a true justice right here, but when Evan could make a profitable return to journalism, my anger could fade. For now, I’m going to revel within the pleasure.