Whisperings began late Wednesday night.

“have heard illegally detained wsj reporter evan gershkovich was released by russia in prisoner exchange and flying to nyc tomorrow,” tweeted the author and political scientist Ian Bremmer. “most excellent news if true.”

And, at last, true it was.

Before 8 a.m. Thursday morning, Bloomberg News carried an anonymously sourced story detailing Gershkovich’s inclusion in a “major prisoner swap.” News desks’ early calls for reactions to the news were met with understandable squeamishness in some quarters; in the absence of official confirmation, celebration seemed risky. The Wall Street Journal itself had yet to carry the news.

The circumstances leading to Gershkovich’s wrongful arrest on “espionage” charges, detention, sham trial (behind closed doors) and sentencing last month to 16 years in a high-security penal colony could not have been murkier. When the confirmation of his release finally came, the internet lit up with statements of gratitude and ecstatic relief.

Gershkovich, 32, who graduated from Bowdoin College in 2014, was one of a group of 16 prisoners released in a complex swap agreement, painstakingly brokered over months, each of them “human pieces of a fragile puzzle,” per richly detailed Wall Street Journal reporting.

Gershkovich’s lengthy ordeal shed a blinding light on the arbitrariness of Russian decision-making power and its utter comfort with taking spurious charges to the limit for naked geopolitical gain.

The campaign for his release by his employer, his friends and his family was unrelenting. Secure in the knowledge that Gershkovich had done nothing but his job as a journalist, all parties kept the pressure on until they found a way through. The result of their awe-inspiring resilience has now redeemed and transformed many lives.

The release also goes some small way toward restoring confidence in the U.S. ability to negotiate with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, something that evidently takes an abundance of professionalism, patience and tact.

“What incredible news,” Bowdoin professor Brock Clarke told the Press Herald on Thursday. “(It’s) a tragedy and travesty that Evan was imprisoned in the first place, and for so long, but man, I’m so happy he’s free.”

Clarke, who first met his former student in a fiction workshop, remembered Gershkovich as an empathetic and deft writer. “What a terrific thing to see a student you knew back when become a standout professional,” Clarke said. “That’s what Evan is – a real pro – dedicated, thorough, brave. I can’t wait to see him get back to it.”

Throughout his horrifying detention, in crumbs of reporting and intermittently photographed smiling behind panes of glass in a locked defendant’s dock, Gershkovich’s extraordinary mettle could be felt by the watching world. Concluding his personal written appeal to Putin, an “official request for presidential clemency” in “formal high Russian,” he reportedly asked the president if he would sit with him for an interview after his release.

Back to it, then? To his everlasting credit, Gershkovich never left it.