Putin sticks it to Joe Biden in detained WSJ reporter case

 Biden regime are Pussies  Remember the Iran Hostages?  It took Reagan to get them released  because Carter was a Pussy

As if no one in the Biden administration could ever suspect such a thing, Vlad Putin is going hardball on them.

According to the New York Post:

A Moscow court rejected detained US journalist Evan Gershkovich's appeal for release on Thursday and ordered the Wall Street Journal reporter to remain in custody on espionage charges through late August.

Gershkovich, 31 — who was arrested during a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, Russia in late March — looked tense in a black T-shirt and blue jeans during the run-up to the proceedings at Moscow City Court.

The Bowdoin College graduate paced and chatted with his parents while waiting for the hearing to begin. US Ambassador Lynne Tracy was also present.

Other journalists were eventually escorted from the courtroom, and the proceedings took place behind closed doors. Reporters were able to watch the ruling on two screens outside.

That is pretty unfortunate for the kid, who is guilty of nothing more than writing negatively about Russia's economy in his Wall Street Journal coverage.

They don't need three extra months.  They've already determined the outcome of his case, which is a conviction.  Now they're just dragging it out to wear down Gershkovich, his family, and the Bidenites charged with freeing him.

Putin, indeed, is playing hardball, detaining Gershkovich as a means of keeping Western reporters out of Russia (who the heck would risk it, given the potential consequences?) and sticking it to weak Joe Biden, who has little to negotiate with, having shot his wad already in his trade of arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for detained American basketball star Brittney Griner.

The Russian personnel have already been expelled.  The Russian properties have already been expropriated.  The prisoners of value to Russia have already been traded away.  So now there's this Gershkovich case, and Joe Biden has pretty much nothing left.

Not even the tradeable booty of other countries, such as Germany, where a Russian agent is being held in its jails for murdering a dissident Chechen leader there on behalf of the Russian state, seemed to be good enough.  The Post reported on that effort for a "multi-country prisoner swap" last May here, which so far hasn't led anywhere.  Most likely, Putin doesn't care.

What are the options left?  Rescue the guy?  Be awfully hard from either Moscow or the wilds of Siberia, where he may likely end up, as well as unleash a much more dangerous potential for war.  Dropping sanctions on the oligarchs?  Possibly, but have not heard of any budging in that direction, and in any case, dropping sanctions would open the door to new financing for extending the Ukraine war, which sounds pretty ugly.  Taking a fresh hostage of our own for exchange?  Hard to do when the FBI is focused on investigating President Trump as its Russian agent and it has major problems of its own with its top agents, such as with this guy here.

The Bidenites don't seem to have any ammo, any options that would get Putin's attention.

And the reporter looks utterly innocent, having committed only journalism, not drug offenses or anything else, the avoidance of which would prevent an arrest.

Were these Bidenites not so feckless and easily manipulated by Putin, it never would have come to this.

They started badly by running a weak foreign policy, which gave Putin the green light to invade Ukraine, in striking contrast to that of President Trump, whose unpredictability and unwillingness to show all his cards led Putin to conclude that he'd better not take a chance.

That led to bad relations, given that now our side has been forced into a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, which pretty well ends sane communication.

Then came Griner's arrest — and the stripping of all valuable bargaining chips from the Biden negotiating arsenal with the Bout trade.

After that, checkmate.

Putin knew he could pick up an American reporter who wrote things he didn't like and Biden wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.

That message has undoubtedly hit the Bidenites as they scramble for a solution and end up spinning their wheels.  Vlad plays for keeps.

That also amounts to a message to the world about American weakness — and will serve as a wedge to help peel away other nations from the American orbit.

This is sad stuff, and Biden's weakness is what dropped us into it.  What may happen now is that Putin could extract a very high price from Biden, such as ending U.S. support for Ukraine, and then taking Ukraine as his prize.  Whether Biden takes such a deal is unknown, but don't expect anything rational from Team Biden.

Realistically, the re-election of President Trump might be the only thing that ends this hostage situation, on the same model as Ronald Reagan's election suddenly made Iran's hostage-taking mullahs amenable to releasing their American hostages in 1979.  But that's a long time to wait for Gershkovich, who will undoubtedly endure even harsher conditions in Russia's Gulags as a convicted spy than Griner had to endure as a convicted petty drug user.

Biden apparently couldn't play hardball on Putin even if he wanted to.  Those are the consequences of the extended weakness of Biden's foreign policy on all fronts.  What a dreadful picture.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/putin_sticks_it_to_joe_biden_in_detained_wsj_reporter_evan_gershkovich_case.html