When Pablo Gonzalez stepped off a plane to be greeted by Vladmir Putin last week it appeared to confirm suspicions that he was indeed a Russian spy who had used the cover of a journalist to gather intelligence.
For the past 2½ years, Gonzalez has been in a maximum-security jail in Poland, accused of spying for Russia. On Thursday, he was part of a historic prisoner swap in which the U.S. and allies secured the release of 16 journalists and rights activists in return for eight people requested by the Kremlin.
Putin addressed Gonzalez and others who arrived in Moscow, including Russian hit man Vadim Krasikov, who was jailed in Germany for murder.
“I want to thank you for being faithful to your oath, to your duty and to your country, which has not forgotten you,” Putin said.
The Russian president’s words laid to rest questions around who Gonzalez really is. Supporters had earlier cast doubt on Poland’s accusations. But some investigative journalists — and authorities — said evidence showed he was a part of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU.
Poland’s secret service, without providing evidence, said that Gonzalez used his role as a journalist as a cover for espionage. He denied all accusations.
Gonzalez, who has dual Russian nationality, was born Pavel Rubtsov in 1982, in Soviet-era Moscow. His family left Spain after the Spanish Civil War to seek refuge in Russia.
At the age of nine, he went to live in Spain with his mother after his parents divorced. There he received the name Pablo Gonzalez Yague.
He went into journalism and worked for Spanish outlets Público, La Sexta and Gara, a Basque nationalist newspaper. He worked briefly as a freelancer for Voice of America in 2020 and 2021, and the Spanish news agency EFE.
Spanish secret services sources, interviewed by VOA, said they believed the shaven-headed, 42-year-old was a Russian intelligence operative.
Poland and Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, have also said he was a spy. Poland described Rubstov as a “GRU officer” arrested while “carrying out intelligence tasks in Europe.”
And Moore, at a 2022 forum, said he was an “illegal” arrested after “masquerading as a Spanish journalist.”
In the intelligence community, the term “illegal” refers to spies who operate under non-official cover, meaning that they do not have diplomatic immunity.
“[Gonzalez] was trying to go into Ukraine to be part of their destabilizing efforts there,” Moore said.
However, Gonzalez’s lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, told VOA Sunday that Gonzalez is not a spy and noted that Poland never charged his client.
“Throughout these 2½ years, the Spanish authorities have limited themselves to publicly supporting Pablo’s situation and unofficially supporting Poland’s version of the accusation,” he told VOA.
“In reality, we believe that the Poles have been used by the Spanish secret services because people tend to forget that Pablo was first interrogated in Ukraine at the end of 2022 in the presence of Spanish agents, and at the same time, Spanish agents went to his wife and mother’s houses in Spain to tell them he was a spy,” Boye said.
Boye noted the case of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned on espionage charges, who was freed by Russia as part of the swap and welcomed home by U.S. President Joe Biden.
“Nobody in the USA has questioned that Gershkovich was simply a journalist. We think that neither Gershkovich nor Pablo Gonzalez are spies, but journalists trapped in a new kind of Cold War, where truth matters little,” Boye said.
Gershkovich, his outlet and the U.S. all denied Russia's accusations against the journalist, who was arrested while on assignment for the Journal in March 2023.
Boye has acted as a lawyer for Edward Snowden and Carles Puigdemont. The latter is the fugitive former Catalan independence leader wanted in Spain on charges of embezzlement and misuse of public funds. Puigdemont denies the charges.
And he has faced legal action himself. Boye was convicted in a trial involving separatist movement ETA, and more recently been on trial in a case viewed by some as retaliatory for his work on the Catalan independence trial.
Some media watchdogs that campaigned for Gonzalez during his captivity welcomed his release from harsh conditions.
“He was held in Poland for more than two years on charges of spying for Russia without any evidence of the allegations against him being made public,” the International Journalists’ Federation said in a statement.
Miguel Angel Noceda, president of the Spanish Journalists’ Associations, in a statement noted that, without “going into whether he is innocent or guilty,” the situation González was held in was inhumane, "with long periods of family isolation and prison confinement.”
Gonzalez was arrested Feb. 28, 2022, when crossing from Poland to Ukraine, where he had been reporting on the start of the Russian invasion.
Ukrainian secret service officials had earlier detained him and accused him of spying for Russia, which he denied.
His lawyer, Boye, previously told VOA that Gonzalez had been reporting in the Donbas area for Spanish newspapers and TV.
Agentstvo, an independent Russian online media outlet, published a report in 2023 saying González was a Russian military secret service agent who infiltrated dissident circles. The news site based its report on records from Gonzalez’s mobile phone and dissident contacts, saying he compiled reports on people, including one of those freed by Russia in last week’s deal.
In response, the Free Pablo Gonzalez Association, which campaigned on behalf of the journalist, said the accusations did not respect his right to innocence until proven guilty.
Warsaw-based reporters who had spent time with Gonzalez described him to The Associated Press as outgoing, someone who liked to drink beer and sing karaoke. Others noted he appeared to be better off than the average freelancer.
Among the outlets Gonzalez contributed to is VOA. Emily Webb, a spokesperson for the network, said that Gonzalez worked on a few stories “over a relatively short period of time.”
“As a freelancer who provided content to a number of media outlets, his services were provided through a third-party company used by news organizations around the world,” Webb said. “At no time did he have any access to VOA systems or credentials. VOA, like many news organizations, occasionally uses freelancers. He was one. As soon as we learned of the accusations, we removed his content.”
One person pleased that Gonzalez was freed is his Spanish wife, Oihana Goiriena. She said that she and the couple’s three children have spoken to her husband by telephone.
“It has been fabulous! We are not going to go to Moscow. We will wait until he comes back home,” she told VOA.
She declined to comment on allegations her husband was a spy.
