On Thursday, August 24, the Lefortovo Court of Moscow, at the request of the investigation, extended the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for the Moscow bureau of The Wall Street Journal, accused of “espionage,” Interfax reports.
The arrest has been extended for another three months (until November 30, 2023).
The meeting was held behind closed doors, since the materials of the criminal case are classified.
The journalist is kept in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in Moscow.
Evan Gershkovich, correspondent for the Moscow bureau of the American edition of the Wall Street Journal, was detained in Yekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage on March 30, 2023. The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation stated: “The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, US citizen Gershkovich Evan, born in 1991, who is suspected of espionage in the interests of the American government, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry, have been suppressed.” According to the FSB, on instructions from the United States, Gershkovich collected information constituting a state secret “about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” It is announced that he was detained while trying to obtain classified information. “The Investigation Department of the FSB of Russia initiated a criminal case against a US citizen under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (espionage),” the FSB said in a statement.
It is known that in Yekaterinburg Gershkovich was preparing a material about the attitude of Russians to the Wagner PMC. Fellow journalists noted the absurdity of the accusations of intelligence gathering, since Evan Gershkovich acted completely openly.
Evan Gershkovich, 31, was a reporter for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and The Moscow Times before joining The Wall Street Journal in January 2022. Published in The New York Times, The Economist, MIT Technology Review, Foreign Policy and Politico Europe and other publications. Specializes in coverage of events in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of the former USSR. It is known that in 2010 he graduated from Princeton High School, where in high school he was known primarily as a football player. In 2014, he graduated from Bowdoin College with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Philosophy and English. The last frame on his Instagram is flowers and children’s toys under the monument to Lesya Ukrainka in Moscow, left as a sign of mourning for the victims of the war in Ukraine.