Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich arrested in Yekaterinburg on spying charges

The FSB of Russia announced the detention in Yekaterinburg of the correspondent of the American edition of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Evan Gershkovich, transmits RIA Novosti in reference to the message of the special services. A spy case has been opened against the journalist.
“The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow office of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, the American citizen Gershkovich Evan, born in 1991, accredited to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suspected of spying in the interests of the American government, been removed,” the statement read.
According to the FSB, Gershkovich, under instructions from the United States, collected information constituting a state secret about one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex. The Secret Service statement notes that the WSJ correspondent was detained in Yekaterinburg while trying to obtain secret information.
A criminal case has been opened against Gershkovich for espionage (Article 276 of the Criminal Code), the journalist faces 20 years in prison.
On the detention of Evan Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg on the morning of March 30 reported Yaroslav Shirshikov, a local public relations specialist, in his telegram channel. According to him, “a few weeks ago” he gave an interview to a journalist on the topic of attitudes towards PMC “Wagner” in society. “Evan worked safely for several days and flew to Moscow,” writes Shirshikov.
The PR specialist attached a screenshot to his post. job in the Vecherniye Vedomosti telegram channel with information from a reader about the detention of a person at the Bukowski Grill restaurant in the center of Yekaterinburg. The publication claimed plainclothes security forces whisked away a man with a sweater over his head in a minibus. There was no information about the identity of the detainee at that time. Shirshikov notes in his post that he once dined at Bukowski Grill with Gershkovich.
“And not only my office is very close, but also the office of another hardware hero. It is not difficult to assume that in an unfamiliar city a person will go to familiar places, is it not ?” he wrote.
Also, according to Shirshikov, on the night of March 30 he received a call from a certain “Sir Thomas from London”, who said that Gershkovich had arrived in Yekaterinburg and stopped communicating, but had previously left contact from Shirshikov to the editorial staff. in case of emergency.
The last time Gershkovich was online was March 29 at 1:28 p.m. Moscow time, to write “Evening Gazette”.
“Evan took a lot of risks when he went to prepare such material, but he was well aware of his risks. It was not recklessness,” Republic* editor Dmitry Kolezev wrote on his Telegram channel.
* registered by the Ministry of Justice of Russia in the register of foreign agents
The news is complete