(Moscow) The American ambassador to Moscow said she visited journalist Evan Gershkovich in prison on Thursday, detained for more than a year on charges of “espionage” which he rejects, assuring that he kept “his morale “.
“Ambassador (Lynne) Tracy today visited Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journalat Lefortovo prison, where he has been wrongly detained for more than a year,” the US embassy said on social media.
The journalist was placed in this Moscow detention center awaiting a possible trial or an exchange of prisoners.
“Despite the prolonged wait for his trial, Evan maintains his morale, buoyed by the messages of support that continue to reach him,” the embassy said.
Report to Wall Street JournalEvan Gershkovich, aged 32 and who also worked for the AFP in Moscow, was arrested in March 2023 by the FSB during a report in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals.
He is the first foreign journalist arrested in Russia for “espionage” since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Charges, punishable by 20 years in prison, which he rejects, as do the United States, his newspaper and those close to him.
Russia never publicly provided any evidence and the entire procedure was classified secret.
“We never envisioned such a situation happening to our son and brother, let alone spending an entire year in uncertainty,” his family recently said in a letter to readers of the Wall Street Journal.
Several American citizens have been arrested and sentenced to heavy sentences in Russia in recent years.
Washington, which has supported Kyiv against the Russian army for two years, accuses Moscow of taking them hostage to exchange them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was willing to exchange the journalist for Vadim Krassikov, imprisoned for life in Germany for the murder of a Chechen opponent in Berlin in 2019.
But efforts to free him could have taken a more complicated turn since the death in prison of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny who, according to his entourage, was also part of a prisoner exchange project currently being negotiated.