Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested one year ago today in Russia while doing his job as a journalist.
Or, you could look at it this way: For doing his job as a journalist.
Of course, that’s not what the Kremlin says. Vladimir Putin’s regime says Gershkovich was arrested for espionage.
Gershkovich is just a pawn in the Russian game of needing hostages to swap for Russians held for various reasons in Western countries. Journalists are easier to arrest than other foreigners because they are of course in the business of asking Russians questions in order to write their stories. It’s simple enough to frame that up as spying instead of reporting.
This newspaper, along with dozens around the nation, is taking a stand today calling for Evan to be set free from his Russian prison. Of course we are. This kind of criminal abduction by a rogue state of a journalist doing his job cuts to the heart of what we do: Report the news, “without fear or favor.”
Here’s what the Journal says of their colleague: “Evan was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service in the city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting assignment in the country. He had full press credentials from Russia’s foreign ministry. He was accused of espionage, making him the first American detained on such a charge since the Cold War. Evan, his family, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny these allegations. We continue to demand Evan’s immediate release.”
Like many of the best reporters covering Russia — and like the best editorial commentator on the complex oligarchy the heart of the former Soviet empire has become, the Washington Post’s Max Boot — Evan comes from a Russian background. He was born in the U.S. to Soviet-era emigres. He learned Russian from his parents as a child, a huge leg-up when it comes to being able to report on a country with a language very different from our own that few Americans know how to speak. That facility helped him create a career as a reporter with a focus on Russia. He joined the Journal in January 2022 and before that reported from Moscow for Agence France Press and the Moscow Times.
“Evan is a gifted journalist who has reported extensively on Russia, illuminating developments on the ground at a crucial time,” his editors in New York say.
But not only is he being held on what everyone but the Kremlin says are trumped-up charges — the Russian authorities used the one-year anniversary of Evan’s arrest to further his detention without trial.
“In a closed hearing at the Moscow City Court, a judge granted the request of investigators from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, that Gershkovich remain behind bars awaiting trial until June 30,” the Journal reported this week. “U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said outside the court that Gershkovich remained remarkably resilient but his continued detention was ‘particularly painful’ given that this week marks a year since he was detained. ‘The accusations against Evan are categorically untrue. They are not a different interpretation of circumstances. They are fiction,’ she said.”
A top lawyer for Dow Jones, parent company of the Journal, told the National Press Club last week that the U.S. government should sanction any foreign government that wrongfully detains reporters. That would be fine, though our government already sanctioned the FSB after the arrest. What this will come down to is exercising relentless pressure to secure some kind of prisoner swap for Evan and for Paul Whelan, a Michigan businessman now serving a 16-year sentence for espionage in a Russian penal colony, the only Americans the State Department says are now wrongfully detained in Russia.
Since the Russian prisoners committed crimes such as killing political opponents of the Kremlin, such swaps aren’t pretty. But they are the cost of doing business with thugs in charge of a government, and of continuing to honestly report on their thuggery.