Russia must free journalist Gershkovich
Three months have passed since we joined thousands of our colleagues at leading news organizations in the U.S. and abroad in calling for the release of Evan Gershkovich, the Moscow bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.
Gershkovich, who grew up in Princeton and is a U.S. citizen, was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service on March 29 while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg — a city east of Moscow and the Urals. Gershkovich, 31, is the first American journalist to be unjustly held in Russia since the conclusion of the Cold War three decades ago.
July 7 marked the 100th day of his detention.
Russian authorities have falsely charged Gershkovich with espionage in the interests of a foreign state. The Journal and the U.S. government — including President Joe Biden — have vehemently denied the allegations. They continue to seek his speedy release and we join them today in again calling for his rapid release. Their calls warrant amplification — and action.
We believe deeply in press freedom. As we wrote in April, journalists should not be detained. Journalists should not be arrested for doing their jobs — at home or abroad. Journalists should not be held — or tortured.
As our colleagues at the Journal have said for weeks and months now, Gershkovich’s arrest is a brazen violation of that freedom. His detention is chilling — and it represents a threat to journalism that is essential to the preservation of democracy and free society across the globe.
Press freedom is a striking American value — one enshrined by the First Amendment. We will defend it relentlessly — from ongoing attacks here at home and from attacks like Russia’s wrongful detention of an American journalist.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that strongly advocates that journalists be allowed to work in safety and without fear of reprisal, was unequivocal in that same conviction.
“By detaining the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Russia has crossed the Rubicon and sent a clear message to foreign correspondents that they will not be spared from the ongoing purge of the independent media in the country,” Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said days after Gershkovich’s detention.
Gershkovich must be released. The U.S. Government should continue to press on every barricade and pull on every lever to see his return to safety through.
Who is Evan Gershkovich?
Before he arrived in Russia to lead The Journal’s Moscow Bureau in early 2022, Gershkovich had built an estimable portfolio of reporting as a correspondent and reporter. He began his career as a news assistant at The New York Times and, after a few other assignments there, he left to work as a correspondent for The Moscow Times before joining Agence FrancePresse.
A native Russian speaker, his parents are Soviet emigres who made their home in Princeton. There, Gershkovich was a star soccer player at Princeton High. At Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 2014 with a degree in philosophy and English, he was a staff writer on The Bowdoin Orient, the student weekly, an editor on student magazines and a DJ on the student radio station.