Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich has been arrested in Russia on suspicion of espionage, according to Russia’s security service.
The FSB claimed Gershkovich was “acting on instructions from the American side” and alleged that the reporter “was collecting information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Russia.” It provided no evidence to support the allegations.
However, it provided no evidence to support the allegations.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed Thursday that the activities of the detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich were “not related to journalism.”
“What an employee of the American edition of The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg has nothing to do with journalism,” Zakharova said on Telegram, in comments translated by Google.
Russian authorities arrested the journalist accusing him of gathering information classified as a state secret about a military factory.
It did not name the factory or say where it was but said it had detained him in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg as he was trying to procure secret information.
Russia has tightened censorship laws since it sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year in what it called a “special military operation.”
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported that Gershkovich would be transported to Moscow and held in the capital’s Lefortovo prison, an FSB pre-trial detention facility.
Gershkovich, who has covered Russia since 2017, previously worked at The Moscow Times newspaper and France’s Agence-France Presse news agency.
In recent months, he had primarily covered Russian politics and the conflict in Ukraine.
His mobile phone could not be reached on Thursday and, according to the Telegram messenger service, he was last online on Wednesday at 1:28 p.m. Moscow time.
Several journalists have been detained, disappeared, or have died in suspicious circumstances in Russia.
Russia ranks 155th out of 180 countries assessed in the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index last year, putting it on the index’s red list, indicating a “very bad” press freedom situation in the country.
Shreya Bansal is a student of Journalism. She is an enthusiastic creative and content writer. Shreya is currently working at The Shining Media as a journalist and can be contacted at shreyabansal@theshiningmedia.in
