Antony Blinken demands release of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has demanded the immediate release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained in Russia on dubious spying charges — as a chilling tweet Gershkovich posted just months before his arrest resurfaced.
In a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday, Blinken pushed for the 31-year-old reporter’s urgent liberation.
“Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” the State Department said.
“The Secretary called for his immediate release.”
Gershkovich was arrested last week after Russian authorities accused him of espionage while he was reporting in the city of Yekaterinburg.
During the call with his Russian counterpart, Blinken also reiterated the Biden administration’s demand that “wrongfully detained” Paul Whelan be released from a Russian prison.
Whelan, a former Marine, has been imprisoned for four years, as part of a 16-year sentence, on charges of espionage that he and the US continue to deny.
“The Secretary and Foreign Minister Lavrov also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work,” the State Department added.
Meanwhile, an ominous tweet Gershkovich posted in July — eight months before he was detained — foreshadowed his terrifying fate.
“Reporting on Russian is now also a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years,” he eerily tweeted on July 12, 2022.
The chilling remark was in response to the possible prison sentence that opposition politician Ilya Yashin was facing in the country.
Russia’s FSB security service has accused Gershkovich, a US national, of gathering information classified as a state secret about a military factory, though provided no evidence to back up the accusations.
WSJ Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker told her staff in a March 31 message that the Russian government’s actions “are completely unjustified.”
“Evan is a member of the free press who right up until he was arrested was engaged in newsgathering,” Tucker said. “Any suggestions otherwise are false.”
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a message to company employees Sunday that Gershkovich was “unjustly arrested” in Russia.
“Evan is an esteemed, principled journalist and colleague, and has sought to keep the world well informed during a particularly troubled period,” Thomson said.
“We are obviously pursuing all possible avenues, public and beyond, to secure Evan’s release.”
The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are both owned by News Corp.
Tucker said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday she’s “optimistic that we’ll be able to make some sort of contact with him next week.”
Gershkovich pleaded not guilty before a judge in Moscow to espionage counts and was then ordered to be held in jail until May 29.
He’s the first reporter since 1986 to be criminally charged with spying in Russia.
The arrest comes more than a year after Russia invaded Ukraine and months after WNBA star Brittney Griner was released after she was detained by Russian authorities in February 2022.
She has also called on Gershkovich to be released.
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