Who is Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia? | World news
(Reuters) – Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal arrested in Russia on espionage charges, is a 31-year-old American who has reported on Russia for various outlets for six years.
In the Journal, he has reported extensively on the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In conversations with friends, he said he saw his role as telling the story of how the war was changing Russia, and he knew it could be dangerous to do his work in the face of strict censorship laws that had passed. in the first days of the campaign. .
Also Read | Russia Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter on Suspicion of Spying: Report
“Evan is ignorant or naive about the dangers,” tweeted his friend, New Yorker journalist Joshua Yaffa.
“He is a brave, committed, professional journalist who travels to Russia to report on stories of import and interest.”
A well-known Russian speaker born to Soviet emigres who grew up in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the British Moscow Times, and later worked for the national news agency. French Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Russia announced the start of a “special military operation” in February 2022, just as Gershkovich was in London, about to return to Russia to join the newspaper’s Moscow office.
He decided that he would live in London but traveled to Russia regularly for reporting trips, as an accredited correspondent with the Foreign Office.
It was on such a trip, to the industrial city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, this week that the Federal Security Service of Russia, FSB, successor to the Soviet KGB.
WAR REPORT
Early in the war, Gershkovich went to Belarus, where he witnessed Russian military ambulances supporting a hospital 30 miles (50 km) from the Ukrainian border in a report that showed Minsk was supporting Russia’s war and indicated that Russian forces are taking heavy casualties.
He spoke with a Russian soldier to produce a detailed account of what went wrong with Russia’s military plan, and he contributed to an article arguing that President Vladimir Putin’s “isolationist and disillusioned” leadership has built a power system. that increases your odds on the campaign.
Gershkovich also reported from Russia’s border regions, examining the attitudes of communities that succumbed to a harsh Kremlin information campaign about the conflict that threatened to spill into their cities.
Rights groups, activists and partners called on Wednesday for his immediate release, as a Moscow court said Gershkovich would remain in pre-trial detention until at least May 29.
“Evan Gershkovich is a very respected, excellent journalist, who is being held in Russia for doing his job,” said Washington Post’s Moscow bureau chief Robyn Dixon.
“I know and admire you. It is terrible to write this story. It should be released immediately.”
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
