US correspondent Evan Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison from Russian courts. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), heir to the KGB, on Wednesday arrested the Wall Street Journal journalist in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, where the country is divided between Europe and Asia. Russian authorities have accused him of committing an alleged espionage crime by gathering information about a military industrial company during the war. Various independent and official Russian media indicate that he was preparing a report on the popularity of the Wagner mercenary company among the population.
“Gershkovich, at the direction of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” the FSB said in a statement accusing the reporter of spying “in the interest” of the government of the United States”. The Wall Street Journal, for its part, has shown “its deepest concern for the journalist’s safety” and flatly denied the Russian allegations. In a statement sent to Portal, the Wall Street Journal “vehemently denies the FSB’s allegations and calls for the reporter’s immediate release”.
Despite these appeals and without waiting for the judicial conclusions, the Kremlin already seems to be aware of its guilt. “As far as we know, he was caught red-handed,” said Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov. For her part, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, María Zajárova, confirmed this statement. “It is not the first time that the foreign correspondent condition has used both the journalist visa and the accreditation of foreigners to cover up non-journalistic activities in our country. He is not the first Westerner to have been spotted under these circumstances,” the diplomat said.
Preventive Prison
Gershkovich was transferred to the prison in the Lefortovo district of Moscow. The same district court has ordered preventive detention until May 29 without initially granting access to the journalist’s lawyer, Daniil Berman. According to the portal Ovd Info, which specializes in Russian repression, the bailiffs prevented the lawyer from entering the country, even though they were assigned to defend the Wall Street Journal reporter. “There’s already a lawyer,” the guard told him.
The independent newspaper Meduza, banned in Russia under the label of an undesirable organization, reports that Gershkovich was arrested this Wednesday outside a restaurant in the Ural city. The newspaper noted that in this city the American reporter collected information about the attitude of the Russian population towards the Wagner private army, the protagonist of both its bloody offensive in the Bakhmut region of eastern Ukraine and the open confrontation between its owners , Yevgueni Prigozhin, and the leadership of the Ministry of Defense.
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The newspaper also notes that Gershkovich is said to have visited the city of Nizhny Tagil, where an Uralvagonzavod tank factory is located. Vice President of the Security Council and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev toured its facilities in October last year.
Meduza’s information about Wagner’s report is confirmed by the newspaper Kommersant, one of the country’s main media outlets. The newspaper emphasizes that the journalist previously met with a PR specialist, Yaroslav Shirshikov, “to study society’s attitude towards Wagner.”
Gershkovich, born in 1991, has lived in Russia for six years and is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau. The Russian security forces themselves emphasize in their information that the journalist is legally accredited in the country by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to writing for the American medium, the journalist also collaborated with the France Presse agency and the independent Russian newspaper The Moscow Times.
The correspondent had been missing since Wednesday. The newspaper Kommersant reports that his phone was last online at 1:28 p.m. Moscow time. According to local newspaper Vechernie Novosti, a reader witnessed the arrest of a man in the city center. “When they took the detainee away, they covered his head with a T-shirt so passers-by couldn’t see his face,” the outlet added.
Gershkovich’s imprisonment coincides with the worst moment in US-Russian relations in decades, a situation when one of the few elements of contact between Washington and Moscow is focused on the exchange of their prisoners. In December, American basketball player Brittney Griner was handed over by Moscow in exchange for arms dealer Víktor Bout, known as the Dealer of Death. The athlete was sentenced to nine years in prison, of which she spent ten months behind bars.
Detained the girl’s father in the drawing
Belarusian security forces have also arrested Alexei Moskaliov in the last few hours, who was sentenced to two years in prison for discrediting the Russian army, lawyer Dmitri Zajvatov told Russian media Dozhd. The lawyer pointed out that the arrest operation was coordinated “at the highest level” between Aleksandr Lukashenko’s KGB and Vladimir Putin’s FSB. The Minsk apartment where he was hiding was destroyed during his search.
Moskaliov, 53, had escaped from house arrest early in the morning of the day he was due to hear his verdict. The man came to the attention of Russian police last year after his daughter Maria Moskaliova, Masha, then 12, made an anti-war drawing at school showing Russia firing rockets at a Ukrainian mother and child.
After a months-long investigation, Moskaliov was officially accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces in connection with separate anti-war comments he allegedly made on social media. On March 1, the day of her father’s arrest, the girl was taken to an orphanage.
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