U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Russia to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained last week, and American Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018.
Blinken made the demand in a rare phone call with counterpart Sergei Lavrov, according to a statement by the State Department on April 2.
Blinken "conveyed the United States' grave concern over Russia's unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist," the statement said.
"The secretary called for his immediate release [and] further urged the Kremlin to immediately release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan."
The statement also said the two top diplomats "also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work."
Former marine Paul Whelan was arrested for alleged spying in 2018.
The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the call, saying Lavrov told Blinken that it was "unacceptable" for Western media to "whip up a storm" over Gershkovich’s arrest and that "a court will determine his future fate."
Lavrov repeated Russian allegations that Gershkovich was caught "red-handed" attempting to obtain "secret information."
The White House and the WSJ have denied the allegations and said Gershkovich, who was detained in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, is a working journalist.
"These espionage charges are ridiculous. The targeting of American citizens by the Russian government is unacceptable," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news briefing on March 30.
During a closed-door session on March 30, the Lefortovo district court in Moscow agreed to a request from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor of the Soviet-era KGB security agency, to hold Gershkovich under arrest for two months.
Mediazona reported from the courthouse that Gershkovich's lawyer was not allowed to be present at the hearing, and another lawyer had been appointed to represent his client.
Gershkovich, 31, a U.S. citizen based in Moscow, had been in Yekaterinburg reporting about the attitude of Russians toward the Kremlin's war against Ukraine and on the Wagner mercenary group.
President Joe Biden on April 1 urged Russia to release Gershkovich, the first U.S. correspondent to be detained on spying accusations since the end of the Cold War.
U.S. women’s basketball star Brittney Griner was held in Russia for 10 months after being arrested at a Moscow-area airport on drug possession charges. She was released and returned to the United States last December in a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Many analysts said the trade favored the Kremlin since Bout was a convicted global arms dealer while Griner was held on minor drug charges, and that the White House should have forced the inclusion of Whelan -- a former U.S. Marine being held in Russia since 2018 on what Washington calls trumped up charges.
Griner on April 2 urged the White House to use "every tool possible" to win the release of the American journalist.