[ad_1]
On Friday (July 7), American journalist Ivan Gershkovich, correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, celebrated 100 days of detention in Russia. He faces charges of espionage, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
On Friday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that the United States has been in talks with Russia to try to bring Gershkovich home, but that there is no “clear path” to his release.
Who is Ivan Gershkovitch?
The son of Jewish immigrants who left the Soviet Union during cold War For the United States, the 31-year-old Gershkovitch grew up speaking Russian at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. After graduating from the prestigious Bowdoin College in Maine, he began working with The New York Times in 2016 and joined The Moscow Times and then Agence France-Presse, before becoming a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Gershkovich began covering Russia for the Wall Street Journal just a month before the country’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Why was Gershkovitch arrested?
The Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s top security agency and successor to the KGB, announced on March 29 that it had Gershkovich was arrested from the city of YekaterinburgLocated 1,400 km east of Moscow, on charges of espionage.
The agency said it had “stopped the illegal activities of American citizen Ivan Gershkovich, born in 1991, who is the Moscow bureau correspondent for the American Wall Street Journal, accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, suspected of espionage for the interests of the US government.”
The FSB also claimed that the reporter was assigned “from the American side” to collect information about “the activities of one of the enterprises of the military defense complex.” Details of the facility in question remain unclear as the agency has refused to release its name, exact location, or any evidence of Gershkovitch’s alleged actions.
Quoting Russian news website Meduza, based in Latvia, The Independent reported that “the journalist was visiting Nizhny Tagil, the site of Russian combat tank producer Uralvagonzavod… Dozens of arms-producing companies are located in the city.”
After his arrest, Gershkovitch was returned to Moscow and charged with espionage. On June 22nd A Moscow court rejected an appeal to release the journalist, being held in Lefortovo prison, where the KGB previously held dissidents. The court also upheld a ruling to keep him in detention until August 30. It is worth noting that Gershkovich is the first Western journalist to be imprisoned in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
How did the United States respond?
President Joe Biden called Russia’s treatment of Gershkovitch “completely illegal” and urged the country to “let him go.” A few days after the journalist’s arrest, the United States officially classified him as being unjustly detained, saying that the espionage charges were bogus and that the case was political. However, Russia maintained that Gershkovitch was “in the act” and that his activities in Yekaterinburg had “nothing to do with journalism”.
So far, US Ambassador to Moscow Lynn Tracy has been allowed to meet the journalist only twice – the last meeting took place on July 3. After her second visit to Gershkovitch, the US State Department said: “Ambassador Tracy reports that Mr. Gershkovitch is in good health and remains strong despite his circumstances.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal, in a statement, said it was “deeply concerned” for the safety of its staff and that it “vehemently denies the FSB allegations and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and loyal reporter.”
What are the chances of Gershkovich’s return?
So far, it’s hard to say. The Kremlin indicated earlier this week that it was open to a new prisoner exchange arrangement in the near future that could include Gershkovich. But she insisted that such negotiations should take place out of the public eye.
“I don’t want to give false hope,” Sullivan told reporters. What the Kremlin said earlier this week is true. There were discussions. But those discussions didn’t result in a clear path to a solution, and so I can’t just stand here today and tell you we have a clear answer for how to bring Ivan home.”
How did Russia crack down on the media after invading Ukraine?
Shortly after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine War in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin’s government intensified its actions against independent news media and journalists. It passed a law against spreading “false information” about the invasion and blocked access to Facebook and major foreign news outlets.
Russia also blocked the websites of Voice of America, BBC, Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Recently, in January, I announced the Meduza independent news outlet “An undesirable organization,” banning the operation of the site in the country.
[ad_2]
