Gershkovich was recently detained in Yekaterinburg, where he allegedly tried to obtain secret information about a Russian military industrial company.
Gershkovich is the first journalist from a US publication to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War.
Willan, who previously served in the US Marines, but then worked for an auto parts company in the US, was detained in December 2018 in Moscow. Russian state secrets were allegedly found with him. In addition to US citizenship, Willan also holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenships. Whelan’s family and the US government consider the espionage charges against him baseless.
Blinken and Lavrov also talked about how “important it is to create an environment that allows diplomatic missions to do their work,” the US State Department said.