The Russian court, which took its decision behind closed doors on Tuesday May 23, agreed with the security service, the FSB, which asked that the journalist remain behind bars pending his trial, the date of which has not yet been set. . This is the second time such a decision has been made.
>> Russia: the “Wall Street Journal” is mobilizing for Evan Gershkovich, American journalist arrested for “espionage”
Evan Gershkovich, 31, son of Soviet emigrants, has been working in Russia for ten years. On March 29, he was arrested while on assignment in Ekaterinburg, a large industrial city, suspected of having collected classified information there on a defense industry company. According to the authorities, he is even arrested “in the act“. Nothing more is known, the file is classified “secret defense”. It must be said that this is an exceptional case: never, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has a foreign journalist had been detained for “spying“. Until now, the authorities had contented themselves with expelling them from the territory.
“We expected there would be no change in Evan’s wrongful detention, but we are deeply disappointed.says his employer, the wall street journal. The charges are patently false and we continue to demand his immediate release.“. Evan Gershkovich, his family, as well as the White House reject the accusations en bloc: “Information is not a crime“.
According to New York Timeshis parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, who had traveled from New Jersey, were allowed into the courtroom for the first time they had seen their son since his arrest there. is more than 50 days old.
Muzzle the media
The case of Evan Gershkovich testifies to the Kremlin’s desire to muzzle the media – and freedom of expression, period. There are no longer many foreign correspondents in Russia, no more independent newspapers or television: Vladimir Putin did not hesitate to stifle criticism of the war by making them liable to long prison sentences.
Remember, at the beginning of the year, Vladimir Kara-Murza, collaborator of the washington post and dissident, sentenced to 25 years in prison. Evan Gershkovich, he faces up to 20 years in a Russian penal colony.
By keeping him in prison, Russia is also putting pressure on the United States: here again, this decision must be read in the context of the war in Ukraine, which has exacerbated tensions between Moscow and Washington. Moreover, last Friday, the American ambassador could not visit the journalist in prison. The Kremlin refused for the second time, and did not even hide the fact that it was a retaliatory measure: last April, Russian journalists were deprived of visas and were not allowed to accompany the headquarters of the United Nations in New York the head of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov.
Russia at war with the “collective West”
Hopes for Evan Gershkovich’s release are dim. A prisoner exchange, such as the one that freed American basketball star Brittney Griner in late 2022, cannot take place until a verdict is reached. However, even in the most favorable periods, the investigation of an espionage case normally takes several months.
More widely, in Russia the word “war“…Not to describe the fighting and the missile shipments in Ukraine, but to qualify Moscow’s relations with the West at large, namely the United States, NATO and the European Union. Sergei Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said this last week: “Russia has entered a phase of acute confrontation with the collective West“The Gershkovich affair is one of the many symptoms of this.