UNITED WE STAND
Rishi Sunak slams Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich & says ‘we stand with United States’
A LEADING Western journalist faces up to 20 years in a Russian jail on fake spying charges in yet another assault on the free press from the Kremlin.
The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich was arrested by the Federal Security Service — the hated KGB’s successors — on Wednesday last week while reporting in central Russian city Yekaterinburg.
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The American’s arrest has led to international outcry and further condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his latest bid to ramp up tensions with the West.
PM Rishi Sunak yesterday slammed the detention, his spokesman saying: “We stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States who are leading on efforts to get Mr Gershkovich free.”
US President Joe Biden had sent a clear message to Putin on Friday, saying: “Let him go.”
In a Moscow court the previous day 31-year-old Evan was charged with espionage, accused of gathering information on a Russian defence company.
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Later that day a stern-looking Evan, from New Jersey, was photographed leaving the court with his face partially covered by a yellow jacket hood and wearing baggy jeans.
His editor-in-chief, British executive Emma Tucker, fiercely denied the allegations, saying: “It’s utter rubbish. Evan was doing what reporters do.”
In a further statement, she said: “Evan is a member of the free press who, right up until he was arrested, was engaged in newsgathering.
“Any suggestions otherwise are false.
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“His sole purpose in his work is to capture issues occurring around the world and to shed light on them so that the public can make informed decisions about how to navigate the future.”
In protest at the arrest, leading journalists are sharing news of his capture with #IStandWithEvan on social media.
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The hashtag has been picked up by Arsenal supporters after they learned that Evan is a Gunners fan.
He is now remanded in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail until next month, according to Russian state media.
His employers at Dow Jones — who publish the Wall Street Journal and are part of The Sun’s parent company News Corp — are insisting on his immediate release and at least to allow him to speak to a lawyer.
Meanwhile, in a phone call to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged him to let Evan go free.
Stony-faced Lavrov’s response was to tell the US not to “make a fuss” by politicising Evan’s arrest.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year reporters have risked their lives to report on the conflict, including Evan, who was one of the few reporters on the ground in the war-torn country.
As well as the Ukraine war, his recent work has included reports on Russia’s ailing economy, and protests in the former Soviet Union country of Georgia.
His colleague Thomas Grove said: “He’s being held hostage, effectively. Through no fault of his own he’s behind bars.”
The alarm was raised on Wednesday, when Evan’s New York-based colleagues failed to hear from him shortly after he arrived in the Ural Mountains for the second time in a month.
His last text to his co-workers came from a steak house just after 4pm US time after they wished him luck. He replied: “Thanks brotha, I’ll let you know how it goes.”
But after hours of silence, they began to worry.
Thomas told how he asked a friend of Evan’s to check in on the flat where he was staying.
The friend sent the response “He’s not there. Let’s hope for the best.”
Thomas continued: “After I hadn’t heard from him for about seven hours I got worried, shot him a message and it didn’t go through.
“Then I reached out to our security team.”
Evan was born in the States but his parents, Ella and Mikhail, were both Jewish exiles who fled the Soviet Union in 1979.
As a result of his heritage he grew up speaking fluent Russian and watching Russian cartoons.
After he landed his first job at the New York Times, a colleague encouraged him to use his language skills to report on Russia.
In 2017 he began working at the Moscow Times, and immersed himself in the capital’s dive bars and culture, where friends called him Vanya.
He made a name for himself for his habit of going the extra mile for a story. He camped out for days during forest fires in the Siberian region of Yakutia while other correspondents had long since gone back to their hotels in Moscow.
He sat with student doctors on wards as they began to treat hordes of sick during the start of the Covid pandemic.
Last year he took up his current job with the WSJ, just a month before Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine.
In the past year he had shown bravery by speaking out about the risks journalists face by simply doing their jobs in Russia.
He tweeted in July: “Reporting on Russia is now also a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.”
He told how, near the end of 2022, he was in a sauna when a Russian heard him speaking English.
The man turned to him and said: “Stop speaking that f***ing language.”
And more recently things took an even more sinister turn for the young reporter.
On one job he was followed by Russian security officers who filmed him and pressured sources not to talk to him.
On another trip, in the western region of Pskov, he was followed and filmed by unidentified men.
This level of intimidation has not been seen since the Cold War, when in 1986 Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow bureau chief of American media company US News & World Report, was held on spy charges as he was about to leave the Soviet Union.
KGB officers handcuffed him and held him in prison for 13 days.
He was only allowed to return to the States after intense negotiations between the Soviets and the Reagan administration in Washington.
Since then, although Russia has persecuted its own journalists, international correspondents were seen as off limits.
Evan is hostage in Russia’s game of power with West
By Jerome Starkey, The Sun's Defence Editor
BRAVE Evan Gershkovich is a hostage, not a prisoner – an innocent pawn in a great power game who must be freed immediately.
The US-born reporter was seized by Putin’s goons on trumped-up spying charges as he went about his work for the respected Wall Street Journal.
There is not a shred of evidence against him and the free world’s press and leaders have united to call for his immediate release.
At first Evan’s ordeal looked like a press freedom issue.
Russia is one of the most difficult and dangerous places in the world to be a reporter.
At least 58 journalists have been killed for their work, some 19 are in jail and seven more are missing.
The country sits close to the bottom of the World Press Freedom index, one up from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Yet Evan was among a handful of truly courageous reporters who stayed when hundreds fled draconian crackdowns that came with the Ukraine invasion last year.
Almost all independent media outlets were denounced as “foreign agents” and banned.
Evan’s arrest by FSB spooks – and the horrific prospect of 20 years in a penal colony – will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on the handful of reporters who are left.
But the real reason for his arrest may be even more sinister.
Moscow likely needs a bargaining chip.
Precisely why is still unclear, but it could be to broker a hostage swap for the deep-cover FSB agent Sergey Cherkasov, who was jailed for 15 years in Brazil last year.
The US said Cherkasov had posed as a Brazilian national to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
At least six of these deep-cover agents have been unmasked in the past year.
Either way, picking on Evan Gershkovich is indefensible and shocking – even by Putin’s low standards.
Decency demands his release.
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But Putin, himself a former KGB agent, has made his feelings towards the Western media clear.
In March 2022, Ukrainian journalist Yevhenii Sakun was killed in Russian shelling and Sky News reported its staff had been shot at by Russian soldiers.
After Putin introduced a law banning anti-war statements last year, many Western reporters left the country, no longer feeling it was safe to work there.
But some stayed on — including Evan, who had accreditation from the Kremlin to report in the country.
Yet increasing tensions between Putin and the West meant even the most experienced journalists are under the constant threat of arrest.
An open letter to the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, from the New York-based campaign group the Committee to Protect Journalists read: “Gershkovich’s unwarranted and unjust arrest is a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions.
“Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalised and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law.”
Sportsmen and women have also usually been immune to any conflict between Russia and the rest of the world until recently.
Yet last year US basketball player Brittney Griner was imprisoned in Russia after she was found with cannabis oil at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
She was eventually allowed home after the US government agreed to swap her for Russian international arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Evan’s colleagues are convinced he will stay strong — despite the prospect of facing the start of Jewish holiday Passover in prison tomorrow.
WSJ reporter Georgi Kantchev said of his colleague: “I can’t even begin to imagine what he must be going through.
“He’s really strong mentally and physically so I hope he will persevere.”
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Another, James Marson, said: “Evan is not the kind of guy who wants to be the story.
“He wants to tell the story about Russia, about what’s happening in Russia, and I can’t wait for him to get out and start telling that story again.”
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