WSJ Says Putin Responsible For Detained Reporter's Health, Safety

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 31 accused President Vladimir Putin of escalating "the Kremlin’s habit of taking Americans hostage" with the detention of its journalist on alleged espionage charges -- which the White House calls "ridiculous -- and that the Russian leader is personally responsible for Evan Gershkovich's health and safety.

During a closed-door session a day earlier, 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, a 31-year-old U.S. citizen based in Moscow as a correspondent for the WSJ, under arrest for two months.

The FSB says that on instructions from the United States, Gershkovich "was collecting information about one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex, which constitutes a state secret."

"Russia's arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich escalates the Kremlin's habit of taking Americans hostage, and it's more evidence that Russia is divorcing itself from the community of civilized nations," the newspaper said in an article signed by its editorial board on March 31.

The case is likely to exacerbate already sour relations between the two nuclear powers. The United States has been a major supporter of Ukraine's military as Kyiv battles a Russian invasion and has imposed rounds of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow to try to push it to end the war.

U.S. President Joe Biden on March 31 urged Russia to release Gershkovich. "Let him go," he told reporters at the White House when asked about his message to Russia on the arrest.

Gershkovich, whose family emigrated from Russia to the United States when he was a child, was officially accredited as a journalist by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the U.S. and intimidate the foreign press still working in Russia. The Kremlin has cowed domestic reporting in Russia, so foreign correspondents are the last independent sources of news," the WSJ said.

"Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest comes days after his byline was on a revealing and widely read dispatch documenting the decline of the Russian economy. The Kremlin doesn't want that truth told," the article said, adding the WSJ denied the "dubious" allegation of spying.

The criminal case for espionage against Gershkovich appears to be the first against a foreign journalist in post-Soviet Russia. The crime is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The Kremlin repeated on March 31 its allegation that Gerhkovich was caught "red-handed" even though no evidence of him committing a crime has been revealed, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying accredited foreign journalists "do not face any restrictions" in the country and can "continue their journalistic activity."

Gershkovich was remanded in custody by the Lefortovo court until May 29. His lawyer was not allowed to be present at the hearing -- another lawyer had been appointed to represent him -- and as of early on March 31 he had yet to be given consular access.

It is not known where Gershkovich is being held, but in similar previous espionage cases heard before the same court, the accused were held at the Lefortovo Detention Center, the infamous former KGB jail where political detainees were held -- and tortured -- in the Soviet era.

Since it launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has tightened censorship laws to stifle dissent by broadening the definition of what constitutes a state secret and setting harsh prison terms for those seen as having "discredited" the country's military.

Some analysts speculated the move may follow a similar pattern to the last American reporter to be arrested in Russia on espionage charges.

In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff was a correspondent for the U.S. News and World Report when he was detained by the KGB. He was held -- without formal charges being laid -- for 20 days until he was swapped for an employee working at the Soviet Union's United Nations mission in the United States who had been arrested by the FBI.

The WSJ pointed out in the editorial that the arrest could also be "a response" to charges brought last week by the U.S. Justice Department against Sergey Cherkasov, a Russian national charged with fraud and of being a foreign agent.

"Mr. Putin often takes hostages with a goal of exchanging them later for Russians who’ve committed crimes in the U.S.," the newspaper said.

The two countries held a prisoner swap in December involving American basketball star Brittney Griner and 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 another American -- Paul Whelan -- being held in Russia on what Washington calls trumped-up charges.

"Thuggish leaders keep doing thuggish things if they think they will pay no price," it added.