The House unanimously passed a resolution late Tuesday calling on Russia to immediately release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained since March.
The resolution also urges the Biden administration to press for Gershkovich’s release in “all interactions” with Russia and would provide the journalist with full consular access. Gershkovich, 31, had lived in Russia for six years at the time of his arrest and was covering the Ukraine war for the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau when he was detained and charged with espionage.
“No evidence has been presented to back up this accusation, because there is no evidence. Evan is innocent,” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who introduced the resolution, said on the House floor Monday. “He was simply doing his job reporting on the news in Russia. But we know that the war criminal Putin doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want his own people to know about atrocities that he is committing in Ukraine. He doesn’t want them to know about the corruption within his own government. Or how he has turned their country into an international pariah.”
