US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken began a telephone conversation on April 2 with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, said in a message published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conversation was devoted to the criminal prosecution of the American journalist Evan Gershkovich accused of espionage.
Lavrov drew Blinken’s attention to “the need to respect the decisions of the Russian authorities, taken in accordance with the law and the international obligations of the Russian Federation” and underlined “the inadmissibility of coercing Washington officials and the media Westerners to stir up a stir with the clear intention of giving this affair a political coloring,” according to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry after the conversation.
During the conversation, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that Gershkovich “was caught red-handed while trying to obtain secret information constituting a state secret”, which he allegedly tried to to obtain “under cover of journalistic status”. According to Lavrov, “the facts of the illegal activity” of the American have been established and “his future fate will be determined by the court.”
The head of Russian diplomacy recalled that the American embassy in Moscow had been informed of Gershkovich’s detention “in due time”.
The correspondent of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg on March 30. According to the FSB, the American, under the instructions of the United States, was collecting information constituting a state secret about one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex and was caught in the process of obtaining secret data. A criminal espionage case has been opened against him, in which he faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
“Hostage for exchange”. How Russia and the world reacted to the detention of journalist Gershkovich
WSJ editors expressed “deep concern” for their reporter’s safety and said they categorically denied all charges against him, and also demanded his immediate release. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commenting on the detention of Gershkovich, argued that his work in Yekaterinburg “has nothing to do with journalism”, and the Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov noted that the American was “in the act”. The court, at the request of the investigation, placed the correspondent under arrest.
‘Number one of the prisoners of American nationality’: the HRC assesses the chances of exchanging the WSJ journalist Gershkovich arrested in Russia
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has urged all US citizens to leave Russia as soon as possible, and the WSJ has suggested expelling all Russian journalists from the United States. Peskov, commenting on this proposal, called it absurd. Subsequently, the Wall Street Journal said Russian security forces were tracking Gershkovich even before his arrest.
