Russia announced Thursday, March 30, the arrest for ” spying “ by an American journalist from the daily Wall Street JournalEvan Gershkovich, an unprecedented case in the recent history of the country in the context of repression since the offensive once morest Ukraine.
He is “suspected of spying for the benefit of the United States” and collect information “on a military-industrial complex enterprise” Russian. A crime punishable by ten to twenty years in prison, according to article 276 of the Russian penal code.
Russian diplomacy claimed that the American journalist had been caught “hand in the bag”. “What the contributor to the American publication “Wall Street Journal” was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism”estimated on Telegram the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova.
She added that the reporter was not “not the first famous Westerner to be caught red-handed” and that others had “used the status of “foreign correspondent” for the purpose of covering their activities”.
The Wall Street JournalWho “vehemently refutes” these accusations of espionage, said to himself, Thursday in a communiqué, “deeply concerned for safety” of his journalist arrested in Russia.
“We are particularly worried and we have had the opportunity to condemn the repressive attitude of Russia”whether with regard to the Russian press or the foreign press, declared Anne-Claire Legendre, spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during a press briefing.
The NGO Reporters Without Borders said« alarm[er] » of “what appears to be a retaliatory measure: journalists should not be targeted”.
The Kremlin on Thursday warned Washington once morest any form of reprisals targeting Russian media working in the United States. “We hope there won’t be, and there shouldn’t be”Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the press, when asked regarding the possibility that Russian media offices in the United States were subject to checks.
Espionage legislation tightened
Before joining the American daily in 2022, Mr. Gershkovich was a correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Moscow, and before that, for the English-language newspaper Moscow Times. Perfectly Russian-speaking, the 31-year-old journalist is of Russian origin and his parents are settled in the United States.
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The analysis center R. Politics notes that Russia has recently tightened its laws once morest espionage since it invaded Ukraine. “The problem is that the new Russian legislation (…) allows anyone interested in military affairs, “special military operation”, private military groups to be imprisoned for twenty years [comme Wagner], to the state of the army. » The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) might have taken the journalist ” Held hostage “ for a possible exchange of prisoners.
Russian-American exchanges have taken place a few times in recent years. Several American nationals are still being held in Russia, one of whom, Paul Whelan, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for ” spying “ in a case that the interested party and Washington consider to be fabricated. He was arrested in 2018 and negotiations have been ongoing for several years to have him released. The 53-year-old ex-soldier suffers, according to his family, from health problems in his prison, located in the Russian region of Mordovia.
Repression of the opposition and independent media
The latest exchange between Moscow and Washington took place in December when Russia handed over American basketball player Brittney Griner, detained for drug trafficking, in exchange for the release of arms trafficker Victor Bout, imprisoned in the United States.
Another American currently being held in Russia, Marc Fogel, a former diplomat who worked as a teacher at an American school in Moscow. He was sentenced in June 2022 to fourteen years in prison for cannabis trafficking ” in large scale “. The Russian authorities claimed to have found marijuana and hashish oil in his luggage during a customs check upon his arrival at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.
If the Russian press and journalists critical of the Kremlin are often the target of criminal proceedings in Russia, foreign journalists have been spared, Moscow having preferred to expel correspondents and toughen accreditation rules.
Since the launch of the Russian offensive once morest Ukraine, the Russian authorities have, however, accelerated their repression of the opposition and independent media, generally by using provisions of the criminal code punishing the act of “discredit the army”.
At the same time, for foreign journalists, the conditions for issuing accreditations, on which visas depend, have been tightened. Foreign reporters are also sometimes followed by the FSB during their reporting, especially outside Moscow. In this context, many Western media outlets have greatly reduced their presence in Russia since the entry of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022.
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