Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent arrested in Russia on espionage charges, is a 31-year-old American who has been reporting on Russia for various media outlets for six years. The son of emigrants from the former Soviet Union and fluent in Russian, he has published several works on the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to reports from friends, who came forward this Thursday after his arrest, Gershkovich saw his role as telling the story of how the war was changing Russia and he knew it could be dangerous to do his job in the face of the strict censorship laws put in place by the Kremlin. in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, the Reuters agency writes.
“Evan was not ignorant or naive about the risks,” New York journalist Joshua Yaffa, a friend of Gershkovich, wrote on Twitter.
Evan was not ignorant or naive about the risks. It’s not like he was in Russia because no one bothered to tell him it was dangerous. He is a brave, dedicated, professional journalist who traveled to Russia to tell important and interesting stories. https://t.co/xDq6iFHqiW
– Joshua Yaffa (@yaffaesque) March 30, 2023
“He is a courageous and dedicated professional journalist who has traveled to Russia to tell important and interesting stories,” he added.
A Russian-speaking son of former Soviet emigrants and raised in New Jersey, USA, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the Moscow Times, an English-language publication, and later worked for the national agency France-Presse (AFP) news outlet.
When Russia announced the start of what it called a “special military operation” in February 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine, Gershkovich was in London, about to return to Russia to join the Wall Street Journal in Moscow .
At the time, Reuters writes, it was decided that the American would live in London, but would regularly travel to Russia as an accredited correspondent for travel reports.
It was on one of those trips, to the industrial city of Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, that he was arrested this week by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB.
At the start of the war, Gershkovich had been in Belarus, where he witnessed the activity of Russian military ambulances at a hospital 50 km from the Ukrainian border, in a report showing how Minsk supported the Russian war and indicated that the Russian troops suffered badly. victims.
Human rights groups, activists and colleagues of the journalist called on Thursday for Evan Gershkovich’s immediate release after a Moscow court sentenced him to preventive detention until at least May 29.
Source: DN
