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Russia announced on Wednesday that 31-year-old American journalist Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), was arrested in Ekaterinburg and charged with espionage.
The WSJ “vehemently” denied the allegations and demanded the “immediate release” of Gershkovich.
Russia’s FSB security service, successor to the notorious KGB, said it obtained authorization to arrest Gershkovich after a closed-door meeting of the Lefortovo district court in Moscow. Gershkovich’s lawyer was not allowed to attend this meeting, and journalists were barred from the entire floor of the courthouse where it took place. Russian state media claimed these precautions were necessary because a bomb threat was called into the building.
The FSB charged Gershkovich with “collecting information about one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex, which constitutes a state secret.” He allegedly conducted this vaguely described espionage at the behest of the U.S. government.
“It is not about a suspicion, it is about the fact that he was caught red-handed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted on Wednesday.
Gershkovich has been reporting on the attitude of the Russian public toward the invasion of Ukraine from the Ural Mountains city of Ekaterinburg for several weeks. He was said to be working on a story about the infamous Wagner Group mercenary organization at the time of his arrest.
Before his assignment in Ekaterinburg, Gershkovich lived in Moscow for six years. He worked for the Moscow Times and Agence France-Presse (AFP) before joining the WSJ in 2022. Prior to moving to Moscow, he worked as a news assistant for the New York Times.
Gershkovich was duly accredited as a journalist by the Russian Foreign Ministry, but Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed on Wednesday he abused his credentials for “activities that have nothing to do with journalism.
