What we know about the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia

American journalist Evan Gershkovich, a 31-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been arrested and detained in Russia on suspicion of espionage, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The son of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union who grew up speaking Russian at home in Princeton, New Jersey, Gershkovich graduated from the prestigious Bowdoin College in Maine before embarking on a career in the media, firstly at The New York Times, then The Moscow Times and then Agence France-Presse before joining WSJ, where he began covering Russian affairs just a month before the invasion of Ukraine last year.

The Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s top security agency and successor organisation to the KGB, claimed that Gershkovich had been caught collecting information on “the activities of one of the enterprises of the military defence complex”.

WSJ has denied those allegations and demanded his release, as has US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has called the conduct of Russia’s security services “unacceptable” and discussed the matter with his Kremlin counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has since said the State Department will designate Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained”, which would allow its Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs to lead the case for his release.

Here is everything we know about Gershkovich’s plight.

The arrest

Evan Gershkovich was arrested in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on spying charges, the FSB announced on 29 March.

The FSB said it had “stopped the illegal activities of US citizen Gershkovich Evan, born in 1991, a correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, accredited at the Russian foreign ministry, who is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government”.

It insisted Gershkovich had been tasked “by the American side” with gathering information about “the activities of one of the enterprises of the military defence complex”, believed to refer to a factory, although the FSB declined to name the facility or its exact location or provide any documentary or video evidence of Gershkovich’s guilt.

The journalist had reportedly been visiting Nizhny Tagil, the site of Russian battle tank producer Uralvagonzavod, according to Russian news website Meduza, which is based in Latvia. Dozens of companies producing weapons are based in the city.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed that Gershkovich’s activities in Yekaterinburg were “not related to journalism”.

The Kremlin’s bullish spokesman Dmitry Peskov said other journalists working for the US publication in Russia could remain in post provided they had the right credentials, adding: “Those carrying out normal journalistic activity will obviously keep working, if they have proper accreditation. There will be no problems with that.”

What an authoritarian regime chooses to consider “normal journalistic activity” or otherwise, however, is open to question.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many foreign journalists have pulled out of the country, particularly after Vladimir Putin’s administration enacted laws to punish anyone who discredits its forces taking part in the conflict.

The State Department has repeatedly advised all Americans to leave Russia.

Of the foreign correspondents still operating from Moscow, many remain uncertain about where precisely the line is, but saying anything critical about the Russian military or the economy being in a state of decline appears to carry a severe risk.

Gershkovich’s last report, headlined “Russia’s economy is starting to come undone”, said the Russian economy was feeling the heat of Western sanctions and faced a slowdown, adding that the government’s revenue was “being squeezed”.

The response

The detained journalist has since been brought to Moscow where the Lefortovsky District court ordered at a closed hearing on Thursday 30 March that he be held in pre-trial detention until Monday 29 May.

Daniil Berman, a lawyer representing Gershkovich, was not permitted inside the courtroom or allowed to see the charges when the detention was ordered, he told reporters outside.

Berman said Gershkovich would be taken to Lefortovo, the 19th century central Moscow jail notorious in the Soviet era for holding political prisoners.

On Monday 3 April, the court reported that it had received an appeal against Gershkovich’s arrest from his defence lawyers but no date for a hearing has yet been set.

The TASS state news agency said the reporter had pleaded not guilty. The authorities said the case has been marked “top secret” and has still yet to produce any evidence against Gershkovich.

WSJ said in a statement it was “deeply concerned” for its employee’s safety and that it “vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter”.

The White House echoed those sentiments in a statement and said the “targeting of American citizens by the Russian government is unacceptable”.

It added: “We condemn the detention of Mr Gershkovich in the strongest terms. We also condemn the Russian government’s continued targeting and repression of journalists and freedom of the press.”

Asked on Friday 31 March about the matter, US President Joe Biden urged Russia to release Gershkovich. “Let him go,” he told reporters in Washington when asked if he had a message for the Kremlin.

A Russian state prison monitor, Alexei Melnikov, revealed on 3 April that Gershkovich was in a quarantine cell while undergoing medical checks, had been reading a book from the prison library and had access to a TV, radio and refrigerator.

On 4 April, lawyers were allowed to see the defendant for the first time.

“Evan’s health is good, and he is grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world. We continue to call for his immediate release,” WSJ’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said in a note to her newsroom, adding that the newspaper was encouraged by the visit.

Gershkowich’s family, she said, “are relieved to know we finally have contact with Evan.”

The precedent

Gershkovich’s arrest makes him the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff of The US News and World Report was arrested by the KGB.

Daniloff was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s UN mission, who had been arrested by the FBI, likewise on spying charges.

But he is not the only American currently being held on spying charges by Russia.

Former Marine and corporate security executive Paul Whelan was arrested on dubious espionage charges in 2018 and has since been convicted, although the US government and his family believe they are trumped-up and have called for his release.

Whelan is understood to have been mentioned in negotiations to free women’s basketball star Brittney Griner, who was exchanged in December last year for arms dealer Viktor Bout after being jailed on spurious drug charges relating to the possession of cannabis vape oil.

The tributes

The Reporters Without Borders group said it was “alarmed” by the arrest of Gershkovich and that it “looks like a retaliation measure of Russia against the United States”.

Friends and colleagues were shocked by the news and took to social media to describe the defendant as a committed journalist, dismissing the allegations as bogus and ridiculous.

“Journalism is not a crime,” they posted.

Henry Foy, The Financial Times‘ European diplomatic correspondent based in Brussels, tweeted: “Evan is an exemplary foreign correspondent, a brilliant reporter and a wonderful, kind-hearted friend.”

Joshua Yaffa, a Russia-Ukraine reporter for The New Yorker, posted: “Evan was not unaware or naïve about the risks. It’s not like he was in Russia because no one bothered to tell him it was dangerous. He is a brave, committed, professional journalist who travelled to Russia to report on stories of import and interest.”

Oliver Carroll, a foreign correspondent for The Economist and formerly of The Independent, tweeted that he hopes Gershkovich’s bravery “carries through in these very dark hours. It’s something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Let alone Evan, who is one of the nicest guys in journalism.”