The Russian arrest of American journalist Evan Gershkovich drew a rare joint statement from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who demanded the reporter’s immediate release on Friday.
The Senate’s Democratic and Republican leaders said the March 29 jailing of Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was “wrongful” and marked the latest transgression in Russia’s “long and disturbing history of unjustly detaining U.S. citizens.”
“Let there be no mistake: journalism is not a crime,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, and McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in the statement.
