The US state department has officially designated Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia, as being wrongfully detained, signalling that Washington views the espionage charges against him as bogus and that he is being held as a hostage.
“Journalism is not a crime. We condemn the Kremlin’s continued repression of independent voices in Russia and its ongoing war against the truth,” the state department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said in a statement announcing the designation. “The US government will provide all appropriate support to Mr Gershkovich and his family. We call for the Russian Federation to immediately release Mr Gershkovich.”
The 31-year-old journalist was detained on 29 March in the city of Yekaterinburg, and the Russian security service, FSB, admitted the following day that it had picked him up on suspicion of spying. He was formally charged with espionage on Friday, which Gershkovich and the Wall Street Journal deny. He has widely been described as a talented and well-respected journalist.
The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Wednesday that he had no doubt about the reporter’s complete innocence, but added the formal designation would take a little longer. On Monday afternoon, the national security council spokesman, John Kirby, was asked about the delay, and referred questions to the state department. Gershkovich was officially deemed wrongfully detained less than three hours later.
“This distinction will unlock additional resources and attention at the highest levels of the US government in securing his release,” Emma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal’s editor in chief, said in a statement following the announcement. “We are doing everything in our power to support Evan and his family and will continue working with the state department and other relevant US officials to push for his release.”
The designation opens the door formally to the use of several government mechanisms set up to recover hostages, most importantly the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs and the hostage fusion recovery cell, a multi-agency body designed to share intelligence in order to gain the release of hostages.
Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war, but Moscow has detained Americans from other walks of life on several occasions and later traded them for Russian spies or prisoners, such as the arms trader Viktor Bout.
In its statement on Gershkovich, the state department also called on Moscow to release another US citizen, Paul Whelan, a retired marine with US, British, Irish and Canadian citizenship, who was arrested in Moscow in December 2018, when he was attending the wedding of another ex-marine. At the time, he was working as security director of BorgWarner, a car parts manufacturer based in Michigan. He has also been declared wrongfully detained by the US.
