MOSCOW (AP)-Russia’s security service arrested an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal on espionage charges, the first time a U.S. correspondent has been detained on spying accusations since the Cold War. The newspaper denied the allegations and demanded his release.
Evan Gershkovich was detained in the city of Yekaterinburg while allegedly trying to obtain classified information, the Federal Security Service, known by the acronym FSB, said Thursday.
The service, which is the top domestic security agency and main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, alleged that Gershkovich “was acting on instructions from the American side to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex that constitutes a state secret.”
The arrest comes at a moment of bitter tensions between the West and Moscow over its war in Ukraine and as the Kremlin intensifies a crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and civil society groups. The sweeping campaign of repression is unprecedented since the Soviet era — and activists say it often means the very profession of journalism is criminalized, as are the activities of ordinary Russians who oppose the war. Earlier this week, a Russian court sentenced a father to two years in prison for posting social media posts critical of the war while his 13-year-old daughter was sent to an orphanage.
Gerszkovic is the first American journalist to be arrested in Russia for espionage since the September 1986 arrest of US Moscow correspondent Nicholas Danilov. News and World Report was arrested by the KGB. Danilov was released without charge after 20 days in exchange for a UN-Soviet mission employee arrested by the FBI on espionage charges.
At a hearing on Thursday, a Moscow court quickly ruled that Gershikowicz should be put in prison and held pending a hearing.
A former American detainee was released as part of a prisoner exchange, but a senior Russian official said it was too early to talk about such a deal.
There was no immediate public comment from Washington, although a U.S. official indicated the U.S. government was aware of the situation and awaiting more information from Russia.
Gershkovich, who covers Russia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations as a correspondent in The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of espionage. Prominent lawyers noted that past investigations into espionage cases in the past took a year to 18 months, during which time he may have little contact with the outside world.
The FSB noted that Gershkovich had accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry to work as a journalist, but ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Gershkovich was using his credentials as cover for “activities that have nothing to do with journalism.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters:
“It is not about a suspicion, is it about the fact that he was caught red-handed.”
Gershkovich speaks fluent Russian and had previously worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse and The New York Times. He was a 2014 graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, where he was a philosophy major who cooperated with local papers and championed free press, according to Clayton Rose, the college’s president. The latest report out of Moscow, released earlier this week, focused on a slowdown in Russia’s economy amid Western sanctions imposed when Russian forces invaded Ukraine last year.
