An American reporter for The Wall Street Journal has been arrested in Russia on espionage charges, according to The Journal.
Reporter Evan Gershkovich is part of the newspaper’s Moscow bureau.
The Federal Security Service, Russia’s security agency, said in a statement that Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
Breaking: Russia’s main security agency said it had detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, for what it described as espionage https://t.co/5mr3h7uroZ
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 30, 2023
“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”
The FSB said it had “stopped the illegal activities” they claim Gershkovich was conducting and that an espionage case had been opened against him in the city of Yekaterinburg, a city about 900 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.
Gershkovich has worked for The Journal in Moscow since January 2022 and previously reported in Russia for Agence France-Presse and for The Moscow Times, The New York Times reported. Before that, he was a New York-based news assistant for the Times.
