Wall Avenue Journal pulls Russia bureau chief after reporter arrested as spy
The Wall Avenue Journal pulled its Moscow bureau chief out of Russia Friday, a day after considered one of its correspondents was arrested on spying fees and brought into custody.
Evan Gershkovich, 31, was detained in Yekaterinburg, a metropolis within the Ural Mountains about 900 miles east of Moscow, whereas on a reporting journey Thursday.
Gershkovich has not been granted entry to the lawyer employed by the Journal, the newspaper reported Saturday.
He’s being held on the Federal Safety Service’s Lefortovo jail in Moscow, the place Paul Whelan, a former US marine was initially jailed.
Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on spying fees.
Diplomats and Russia consultants see “little hope” of a speedy launch for the reporter, as espionage trials happen in secret, the Journal reported.
Practically all Western journalists have pulled out of Russia after the nation’s invasion of Ukraine final yr.
The exodus has now been accelerated by Gershkovich’s arrest, in keeping with the newspaper.
The son of Russian Jews who fled the Soviet Union for the US, Gershkovich returned to the nation to report for the Moscow Instances and the AFP after a stint on the New York Instances, earlier than being employed by the Wall Avenue Journal to cowl the nation in 2022.
“He spent his weekends chatting about music, politics, and the information within the banya or sauna and was at all times prepared to assist competing journalists,” the newspaper reported Saturday.
“Evan would discuss … what it means to be overlaying Russia relatively than Ukraine,” a Monetary Instances colleague informed the Journal. “It’s a really tough factor to get your head round, and the place you sit in relation to that when it comes to your personal identification.”
A graduate of Bowdoin School in Maine, Gershkovich grew up in New Jersey the place he was a stellar scholar and soccer participant.
A dogged reporter who has received awards for his work, he frolicked with medical doctors in the course of the COVID pandemic at Russian hospitals and as soon as slept for 4 days within the woods to doc forest fires as they swept by way of a distant Siberian area.
“I simply wish to get the story proper,” he mentioned, in keeping with the Journal profile.
Gershkovich’s arrest and incarceration have been broadly condemned. President Biden demanded Friday that Russia launch Gershokovich.
“Let him go,” Biden informed reporters when requested if he had a message to Moscow about Gershkovich, earlier than including vaguely that “we’re within the course of” of attempting to work out his launch.
“The Wall Avenue Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the instant launch of our trusted and devoted reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal mentioned. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his household.”