US reporter for the Wall Street Journal arrested in Russia for alleged espionage

According to state media, the Russian domestic secret service FSB has arrested a correspondent for the renowned US newspaper “Wall Street Journal” in Yekaterinburg in the Urals on alleged espionage. Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, is suspected of "espionage in the interests of the American government," the FSB said on Thursday, according to the TASS state agency. Criminal proceedings have been initiated against him. The reporter collected information on the military-industrial complex in Russia on behalf of the US side, which constitutes a state secret.

On Thursday afternoon, the Russian state agency TASS reported that a court in Moscow had issued an arrest warrant for Gershovich. If convicted of espionage, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. The court also ordered a two-month pre-trial detention. Gershkovich will initially remain in custody until May 29, which can then be extended, the Lefortowski court said on Thursday. As Tass reported, citing police circles, the case was classified as "top secret". The journalist therefore rejected the allegations made against him.

"The foreigner was detained in Yekaterinburg trying to obtain classified information," the FSB said. Media had previously reported that Gershkovich had disappeared. He had therefore tried to write a report on the attitude of the population to the recruitment attempts by Wagner's private army. The FSB stated that Gershkovich had collected secret information "about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex." It was not announced when the arrest took place.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Gershkovich was caught in the act. What he did in Yekaterinburg "had nothing to do with journalism," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in the online service Telegram. "This isn't the first known westerner to have been caught in the act."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hopes that there will now be no repression of Russian journalists in the United States. "At least that shouldn't be the case, because in the case - I repeat - it's not about suspicion, but about the fact that he was caught in the act," said Peskow.

Americans are repeatedly suspected of espionage in Russia. This is likely to be the first case of a journalist officially accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry. In the wake of the Ukraine war, Russia recently tightened its stance against Western journalists. The Russian opposition spoke of a "hostage-taking".

"Putin is ready to use any method to put pressure on the West," said the team of jailed Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny. In the past, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin had time and again freed Russian criminals imprisoned in the United States through exchanges with Americans convicted in Moscow.

The Wall Street Journal has meanwhile denied all allegations against its reporter and called for his release. "We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family," the newspaper said.

Gershkovich's latest report from Moscow came out this week. It was about the Russian economic downturn amid the sanctions imposed by the West over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The war has led to major tensions in relations between Russia and the United States.

The human rights organization Reporters Without Borders called the arrest of the reporter, who was born in 1991, "worrying". "Journalists must not become targets," the organization demanded. In 2022, as part of its war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian leadership once again significantly restricted freedom of expression and the press in the country.

Other foreign journalists covering Russia have shown solidarity with Gershkovich online. "Evan Gershkovich is a very good and courageous journalist, not a spy, for heaven's sake," wrote non-Russian investigative journalist and intelligence expert Andrei Soldierov. The arrest was “a frontal attack on all foreign correspondents still working in Russia. And it means the FSB has been let off leash.”

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