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.
