"Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich published his first story for the financial publication after returning home from Russia, BNR reported.
Gershkovich was released as part of a historic prisoner swap in August after spending more than 16 months in prison in Russia. He was the first journalist to be arrested and put on trial on espionage charges since the Cold War.
The story published by Gershkovich, along with several of his colleagues, is linked to the spy unit responsible for his arrest, known as the Counterintelligence Operations Department of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
The Counterintelligence Operations Department is "the Kremlin's most elite security force" and is responsible for "surveillance, intimidation, or arrest of foreigners and Russians suspected of working with them", Gershkovich and his colleagues write.
According to Greshkovich, it is the body responsible for "the greatest wave of repression in Russia since the time of Joseph Stalin".
After being tasked with securing the release of Russian hitman Vadim Krasikov, who was imprisoned in Germany for the murder of a Chechen dissident, the Department of Counterintelligence Operations stepped up its campaign to arrest American citizens, including Gershkovich, to use them as "bait".
The U.S. State Department officially declared him "unlawfully detained", and Gershkovich spent more than a year in pretrial detention, mostly in Moscow's infamous Lefortovo prison.
In In July, after a quick, closed-door trial resembling the kind of sham trials other Kremlin critics have faced, Gershkovich was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Weeks later, he was released along with former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan as part of the largest prisoner swap between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.