Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia on espionage charges, has said in his first direct communication to his parents in the US that he is not “losing hope”, and joked in the letter about the quality of the prison food.
Gershkovich, 31, became the first American journalist to be detained in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war when he was detained in the city of Ekaterinburg, 1,100 miles (1,800km) east of Moscow, on 29 March.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said it has opened a case against the reporter for collecting what it claimed were state secrets about the military industrial complex. Gershkovich and the Journal have denied he was involved in espionage.
He has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where he has been allowed visits from his Russian lawyers but not yet permitted to see friends or officials from the US consulate, with Moscow saying the question is still under review.
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” Gershkovich said in the two-page, hand-written note dated 5 April that his parents, Soviet emigrés who live in Philadelphia, received late last week. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write.”
He also teased his mother about her cooking. “Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food,” he said. “For breakfast they give us hot creamed wheat, oatmeal cereal or wheat gruel. I am remembering my childhood.”
The letter, written in Russian – the language the family speak at home – also confirmed that Gershkovich had received a care package sent by friends in Russia containing clothes, slippers, toiletries and stationery.
The reporter’s parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, who fled the Soviet Union in 1979, said in a video interview with the Journal last week that they were optimistic for a positive outcome, and insisted their son still loved Russia.
“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, you know, be optimistic, believe in a happy ending,” Milman said. “But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved.” Gershkovich faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years if convicted.
Milman said her son felt a responsibility to stay in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine as one of the few remaining western journalists to continue reporting in Moscow. “I know that he felt like it was his duty to report … He loves Russian people,” she said.
Gershkovich’s detention has prompted an outcry from media organisations, human rights groups and foreign governments, with Joe Biden last week calling the imprisonment “totally illegal” and telling the family he was working for a release.
The US last week officially designated the journalist, widely described as a talented and well-respected reporter, as “wrongfully detained”, signalling that it views the espionage charges against him as bogus and that he is being held as a hostage.
The Kremlin said Gershkovich had been carrying out espionage “under the cover” of journalism, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, insisted he was “caught red-handed” while trying to obtain secrets.
The Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said last week Washington had threatened “retaliatory measures” if the reporter was not released, adding that he had had a “very harsh” conversation with the US undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland.
Antonov told Russian TV it might be time to reduce the number of US journalists working in Russia. “The Americans have a very good word – reciprocity – which they always insist on,” he said.
“Perhaps it is the time for us to show reciprocity and reduce the number of American journalists who work in Moscow and in Russia as a whole to the number [of Russian journalists] who work in Washington and New York.”
Many US and other foreign reporters left Russia after Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine last year, and more have followed since Gershkovich’s arrest. The US has repeatedly told its citizens to leave Russia due to risk of arbitrary arrest.
