President Biden vows to keep “working every day” for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who’s been “wrongfully detained” by Russia for a year.
President Biden pledged Friday to “continue working every day” to secure the release of Wall Street Journal reporter from Russian detention, as the American journalist’s time imprisoned in Russia hit the one-year mark.
“We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia’s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips,” Mr. Biden said in a statement released Friday that also mentioned the case of , another U.S. citizen who has been held in Russia since 2018.
Gershkovich — whom the U.S. State Department soon after his arrest — is still awaiting a trial on espionage charges that the White House, his family and his employer all insist are fabricated, but which could still see him sentenced to decades in prison.
The U.S.-born son of Soviet emigres covered Russia for six years, as the Kremlin made independent, on-the-ground reporting increasingly dangerous and illegal.
His arrest in March 2023 on charges of spying — the first such charge against a Western journalist since the Soviet era — showed that the Kremlin was prepared to go further than ever before in what President Vladimir Putin has called a “hybrid war” with the West.
