An American journalist has been detained in Russia on charges of espionage for the first time since 1986.
An American agent was allegedly found in Russia again. This time, the correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, US citizen Evan Gershkovich, was detained. According to the version of the Russian special services, Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side,” allegedly “collected information” constituting a state secret about the activities of “one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” He was detained, according to the FSB, “while receiving secret information.”
new hostage
Gershkovich became the first American journalist to be detained in Russia on charges of espionage since 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, an employee of US News & World Report, fell under suspicion, who was exchanged three weeks later for physicist Gennady Zakharov accused of espionage.
The journalistic community suggests that now the Russian authorities might need a new “hostage” to replenish the exchange fund.
Evan Gershkovich worked in Russia for about six years. In recent months, he lived in London, but regularly traveled on business trips to Russia, where he worked as part of the Moscow bureau of the WSJ.
The journalist was detained in Yekaterinburg. The reason for Gershkovich’s visit to Yekaterinburg was a public conflict between the head of PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the governor of the region, Yevgeny Kuyvashev.
Gershkovich asked how Prigozhin was treated in the Sverdlovsk region, said that he wanted to go to Nizhny Tagil, where the defense enterprise Uralvagonzavod is located, as well as to the cemetery in the city of Berezovsky, where the Wagner PMC fighters are buried.
Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk Region Vyacheslav Vegner said that a week and a half ago he met with Gershkovich and spoke with him about his appeal to Prigozhin: Wegner asked the founder of PMC Wagner to involve female prisoners from IK-6 Nizhny Tagil to participate in the war against Ukraine.
Also, according to Wegner, they discussed the former mayor Roizman, the situation in the city as a whole and the industrial enterprises of the Sverdlovsk region. The deputy stressed that he assured the journalist that “everything is in order, the industry is working,” and “enemies in the United States will not wait.”
Another of Gershkovich’s interlocutors, whom he met in Yekaterinburg in mid-March, recalls that he was interested in the history of the Wagnerites from the Urals who died in Syria back in 2018.
Wrote about Ukraine
At the WSJ, Gershkovich covered all the key news stories related to Russia and Ukraine. In early March, he, along with colleagues, released an article about the growing tension between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of PMC Wagner, and the Kremlin elites. In particular, it was alleged in the material, Kremlin officials appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to “curb” Prigozhin, who criticizes the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Gershkovich was also one of the authors of the high-profile WSJ material that Putin’s entourage may hide truthful information about the hostilities in Ukraine from him. Putin receives a written report from the front every morning, however, firstly, the emphasis in it is always on successes, and failures are smoothed out, and secondly, it is sometimes delayed by several days, as it passes through the filters of the FSB, the Security Council and personally head of Nikolai Patrushev, the article said.
Gershkovich’s latest materials were devoted to the deteriorating prospects for the Russian economy, the situation around Bakhmut, the visit of the PRC leader to Moscow, and protests over the “foreign agents” bill in Georgia.
Prior to the Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich worked for AFP, the Moscow Times, the New York Times and lived in Moscow for several years.
A reaction
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that, according to his information, “it is not about suspicions, he (Gershkovich) was caught red-handed.” The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, in turn, said that in Yekaterinburg Gershkovich was allegedly engaged in work that “has nothing to do with journalism.”
Gershkovich was taken to the Lefortovo Court of Moscow, which quickly decided to place him in a pre-trial detention center for two months. The meeting was held behind closed doors, journalists were not allowed to attend.
