We exchanged letters on a weekly basis and throughout his time in a Russian prison the journalist in him never faded
I have dreamed for almost 500 days of writing this piece.
On Thursday, after 16 months in jail, my close friend Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was freed, along with 15 other American, German and Russian prisoners, in a historic and complex prisoner exchange with Moscow, which received eight prisoners, including spies, arms smugglers and a killer in return.
