American Journalist Detained In Russia.
First generation American journalist Evan Gershkvich is currently detained in a Russian prison. The 31 year old moved from New York to Russia in late 2017 taking a job with The Moscow Times. Then in January 2022, he was hired as a Moscow-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
News recently broke Thursday that Russian officials were holding the journalist on the charges of espionage. According to a 2023 CNN article, sources say, “ Russia’s main security service, the FSB, claimed Thursday that Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent based in Moscow, had been trying to obtain state secrets. The Wall Street Journal categorically rejected those allegations, saying in a statement that it ‘vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter.’”
A Russian district court in Moscow reported that Gershkvich would be detained until May 29th. This is the first time an American journalist has been detained since the Cold War. Of course, this isn’t the first American detained by Russia. In February 2022, US basketball player Brittney Griner was detained on drug related charges and was recently released in December. In 2018, former Marine Paul Whelan was detained at a Moscow hotel on charges related to intelligence operations and was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison in 2020.
Gershkovich is also the first journalist to be accused of spying by Russia since 1986, when reporter Nick Daniloff was detained on a similar charge while working for the U.S. News and World Report newspaper and magazine. He spent weeks in a Russian prison before the Reagan administration negotiated his release.
Gershkovich is American born. Born in New York, his parents came to America during a mass emigration during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His arrest followed a night out when his coworkers suddenly weren’t able to reach him. His arrest has been sending shockwaves throughout Washington D.C.
Writer Katie Robertson, in her 2023 article for The New York Times, “Journalist Detained by Russia Was Reporting Stories That ‘Needed to Be Told’”, writes, “Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke on Sunday with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist, said Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, and called for Mr. Gershkovich’s immediate release.”
United States and Russian relations have been on shaky ground over the course of American history and this recent incident does not help. Sources are continuing to investigate next steps and will continue to report updates as they become readily available.
