Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was released from Russian captivity on Thursday as part of the largest prisoner swap between Russia and Western nations in decades. Gershkovich had been imprisoned for nearly 500 days and was recently sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony. Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while on assignment in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Russian authorities claimed he was obtaining information for the CIA, though the allegations against Gershkovich are widely assumed to be false and have been denied strenuously by the Journal. Gershkovich was released around 11…