This week, the global fight to free Evan Gershkovich hits a new and somber milestone one year since The Wall Street Journal reporter and New Jersey native was wrongfully detained in Russia while on assignment and accused of espionage.

A Russian court on Tuesday extended Evan's pretrial detention for the fifth time, holding him in prison for three more months until at least June 30th.

The Wall Street Journal newsroom this week held a 24 hour read a thon to mark the grim date.

Evans peers and colleagues read passages of his reporting aloud to keep his story and their hope that he'll return home alive.

Roger Carstens is the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, and he's been central to making sure that happens.

He joins me now.

Roger Carstens, thank you for coming back on the show.

As we look at this one year anniversary of Evan's detainment.

What can you share with us about where negotiations stand for his release?

Briana, thanks for having me back.

It's a it's really a tragedy that Evan's been held for this amount of time.

The one year anniversary, I wouldn't mind saying one thing about the families and that we have a chance to talk to the Gershkovich family quite often.

We talked to Paul Whelan's family quite often, and it's it's really is a personal tragedy for these families.

So I know what to do is actually kind of a big day and that it's been a year since Evan was detained.

And at the same time, the families are going through, in a way, their own personal hell, this home, this personal tragedy on a daily basis in terms of where the negotiation is.

I can't really get into the details because it it's not helpful to negotiate in public.

But I can tell you that we did put a strong offer out to the Russians last year, and the Russians rejected it.

And since then, we've been trying to bring together we're working with partners and partners and allies to bring together a proposal that the United States can actually deliver and that we believe the Russians will accept.

And the hard work goes on pretty much daily here.

How much, Roger, did the death of opposition and leader Alexei Navalny complicate some of these discussions?

Because there were interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin where his name was mentioned publicly as part of a potential swap.

Did that shift the course that you needed to take?

So, Briana, I would ask the same question.

If I was in your chair from my chair.

It doesn't help to get into the details of this.

I think while it's absolutely tragic, in fact, if anything, I feel for the Navalny family again, having spent so much talking to families of those that have been held.

At the end of the day, we don't have the luxury of quitting, stopping or even pausing.

So regardless of what happens, our office, the office of the White House supports the president and Jake Sullivan and his team.

We're going to keep pushing forward to try to find something that makes sense.

So.

But in terms of the actual details that might have been surrounding Navalny and his role in any of this, it's just not helpful for me in trying to get Paul and Evan back to start talking about the details of this.

We've seen now the court extend his pretrial detention for the fifth time.

Is that the the typical playbook that we see happen in a Russian court?

I mean, you mentioned Paul Whelan, who has been detained for several years.

Mark Fogle is another name that comes to mind, an American who is detained.

Does Russia tend to draw this out to gain more leverage?

You know, they tend to draw it out.

And what they're trying to do, it's hard to really get into the mindset of the people that we talk to negotiate with.

I can say that pretty much everyone's gone through about a roughly a year or year plus of extensions in their pretrial detention.

So it's not necessarily unusual.

What I can say is that if the Russians have extended Evan by another 90 day period, I'm going to have to take a look at that as a positive sign that that gives us 90 days to keep working, to come up with some sort solution.

Now, granted, in 90 days they may extend his pretrial detention again, but alternatively, they may just actually start the actual trial.

And that might make it harder to conduct a negotiation.

So to my mind, I'm going to take this as a positive and we're going to keep working to try to find that solution over the next 90 day period.

Is there any scenario where he could be released before a sentencing or be acquitted?

There always is.

In other words, even if a trial process were to start, I think the Russians have the ability to either speed up the trial and the trial.

So in a way, I could say we have some more flexibility than we might otherwise have.

Having said that, and doing this job for about four years, you find that the people that we negotiate with and whether that be the Russians or people in other countries, once an actual trial starts, for the most part, they'd like to finish that trial process.

And if that takes, you know, three, six, nine, 14 months, that might be a period where we're not able to progress in the negotiations.

So while that's not a hard and fast rule, that's the way we tend to look at it, just based on the evidence that we've gathered over four years.

And it's, I think, to our advantage to try to find a way to solve this sooner rather than later anyway.

Yeah.

Buying a little bit of time, perhaps.

There.

Yeah.

Roger Carstens is the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, Briana.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.