The bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee has led the introduction of a call by 27 senators for the immediate release by Russian authorities of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who they say has been "wrongfully detained in Russia for merely doing his job."
In the draft resolution introduced this week, U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (Democrat-Maryland) and Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho), who are the chairman and ranking member of the influential committee, also demand the release of another American, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.
"Evan and Paul cannot be left behind, and as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will continue to sound the alarm about this grave injustice and do everything in my power to safely bring them home to their families," Cardin said in the text.
Gershkovich, 31, was detained six months ago and accused of espionage.
Whelan is serving a 16-year espionage sentence in a notorious Russian penal colony in Mordovia.
Paul Whelan (file photo)
U.S. officials have called the charges against both men baseless and their detentions "wrongful."
Gershkovich was detained in late March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, and few details are available as materials for the case have been classified. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said at the time of the arrest that it had opened an espionage case against Gershkovich for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex.
Gershkovich, 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.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War.
Arrested in 2018 in Russia, Whelan was convicted of spying charges in 2020. Both he and the U.S. government have denied the 53-year-old is a spy.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy has said the plight of U.S. citizens “wrongfully” held in Russia “remains a top priority for me.”