Brave Evan Gershkovich is a hostage in Russia’s game of power with the West
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.
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The country sits close to the bottom of the World Press Freedom index, one up from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Bargaining chip
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.
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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.