Xavier Colás

Updated Friday, March 29, 2024-19:13

  • Live Ukraine at war

It was a year ago that Evan Gershkovich, 32, became

the first American journalist arrested

on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War. He was detained by Russian security services on March 29, 2023 while researching for 'The Wall Street Journal' in Yekaterinburg. He was accredited as a journalist by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Gershkovich was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB).

He has spent a year in the high-security

Lefortovo prison in Moscow, closely associated with this intelligence service. His detention has been extended until June 30. His newspaper commemorated the anniversary of his arrest by dedicating the cover to him: "A year in Russian prison. A year of stolen stories, of stolen joys, of stolen memories. His crime: journalism," read the headline.

"In Russia, the pursuit of independent journalism and the gathering of reliable facts, the hallmarks of what we stand for, is considered a crime," wrote Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal.

The outlet published a blank space where Gershkovich's article should have been.

The Russian regime has not bothered to hide that Gershkovich was detained to be exchanged in the future for a Russian prisoner. Since his arrest, his detention period has been periodically extended, but there has been no progress on the merits of the case.

Vladimir Putin

"hinted" that he was open to offers to exchange the journalist, according to his media outlet.

US President

Joe Biden

said Friday that the United States will impose costs for Russia's "appalling attempts" to use Americans as bargaining chips. A day earlier the Kremlin had said that total silence is necessary when it comes to discussions about possible prisoner exchanges such as those involving Gershkovich.

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has said Gershkovich had been trying to obtain military secrets. The journalist, the 'Wall Street Journal' and the United States Government deny that he is a spy.


FLOWERS FROM THE CELL

Evan Gershkovich moved to Russia at the end of 2017, after having worked for almost two years at 'The New York Times'. He was an editor for 'The Moscow Times', a local media that publishes in English and Russian. He worked for Agence France-Presse and in January 2022 he moved to 'The Wall Street Journal'. After the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine,

Gershkovich moved to London,

but often returned to Russia to report on the country.

These days Gershkovich reads classics of Russian literature, plays chess with his father by correspondence. Next to his bed, he has a television that sometimes broadcasts clips of Arsenal matches, his favorite team.

His cell is about three meters long and four meters wide

and he shares it with another inmate. According to his family, on March 8 he organized the delivery of flowers to his mother and his sister. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken believes Gershkovich's arrest has made Russia's already restrictive media landscape "more oppressive."

In their remarks on Friday, Biden and Blinken also condemned the detention of Paul Whelan, a former Marine arrested in Moscow in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges in 2020 (both he and the US government deny the charges). "To Evan, to Paul Whelan and to all Americans held hostage or unjustly detained abroad: we are with you.

And we will never stop working to bring you home

," Biden said in statements reported by Reuters.

DEAD BEFORE THE EXCHANGE

The question is when the exchange that frees the reporter will come and what conditions Russia will be able to. In early February 2024, former Fox News host

Tucker Carlson

flew to Moscow to interview Putin. Carlson told the Russian president's advisers that he planned to "put pressure" on Putin to release Gershkovich "here and now." According to Carlson himself, an official close to Putin called it "a great idea" that "could provoke a positive response": these are revelations made by the 'Wall Street Journal' itself. The only thing viewers saw was that Carlson asked Putin several times about Gershkovich's fate. The Russian president did not give a direct answer, but revealed that

he "does not exclude" Gershkovich's return home.

He then went on to talk about "a man who is serving a sentence in a country allied to the United States" and who "for patriotic reasons eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals," in reference to the alleged former FSB officer Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and is serving his sentence in Germany.

Various outlets have reported that Germany and the United States had begun discussing the possibility of a deal in which Berlin could hand over Krasikov in exchange for

Alexei Navalny

, Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan. But on February 16, Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison, and it is unclear where the negotiations stand after that.