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Dozens of people gathered on March 28 on a plaza in Washington on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia and demanded his release.
The event sponsored by the National Press Club marked one full year in jail for Gershkovich, 32, whose detention was extended to June 30 earlier this week by the Moscow City Court.
Gershkovich became the first U.S. journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War when he was detained on March 29, 2023, by the Federal Security Service (FSB), which said he had been trying to obtain military secrets.
The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government have vehemently rejected the espionage charges, saying he was merely doing his job as an accredited reporter when he was arrested.
The group that gathered on March 28 in Washington posed on Freedom Plaza with the U.S. Capitol in the background and with each participant holding a paper with #IStandWithEvan written on it. The gathering included fellow journalists, press advocacy leaders, and friends and relatives of Gershkovich.
Wall Street Journal Associate Editor Paul Beckett, who is leading the newspaper’s efforts to free Gershkovich, also took part along with Gershkovich’s sister, Danielle Gershkovich.
Photos from the event circulated on social media to support the Wall Street Journal’s efforts to raise awareness of Gershkovich’s “unjust detention in Moscow,” said Bill McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club, who also participated in the event.
Earlier on March 28 in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked about reports of a possible prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich, and he stressed the importance of silence about any negotiations.
“We have repeatedly stressed that there are certain contacts, but they must be carried out in absolute silence,” Peskov said.
Gershkovich is one of two American reporters currently being held by Russian authorities. The other is Alsu Kurmasheva, an RFE/RL journalist who holds dual Russian-American citizenship.
Kurmasheva, 47, was arrested in Kazan last October and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent under a punitive Russian law that targets journalists, civil society activists, and others. She’s also been charged with spreading falsehoods about the Russian military and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
RFE/RL and the U.S. government say the charges are reprisals for her work as journalist for RFE/RL in Prague. She had traveled to Russia to visit and care for her elderly mother and was initially detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2 at Kazan airport, where her U.S. and Russian passports were confiscated.
Gershkovich has been designated as wrongfully detained by the U.S. government. Kurmasheva, however, has not despite pleas from RFE/RL and Kurmasheva’s family.
The Wall Street Journal on March 28 published a story about her detention and the difficulties her husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL in Prague, and their two daughters, ages 12 and 15, have had without her and their efforts to have her designated as wrongfully detained.
The designation would mean her case would be assigned to the office of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs in the State Department, raising the political profile of her situation and allowing the Biden administration to allocate more resources to securing her release. The designation currently applies only to Gershkovich and another American held in Russia, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine and corporate security executive who is serving a 16-year prison sentence on espionage charges.
Beckett said other events to mark the anniversary of Gershkovich’s detention include a 24-hour read-a-thon of his work by his Wall Street Journal colleagues at the newspaper’s headquarters in New York and swimming events at Brighton Beaches in New Zealand, South African, Canada, the United States and Britain.
The beaches were chosen in recognition of his family’s connection to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, New York, which is home to a large Russian immigrant community. Gershkovich’s parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, separately, in 1979.
Kurmasheva is one of four RFE/RL journalists — Andrey Kuznechyk, Ihar Losik, and Vladyslav Yesypenko are the other three — currently imprisoned on charges related to their work. Rights groups and RFE/RL have called repeatedly for the release of all four, saying they have been wrongly detained.
Losik is a blogger and contributor for RFE/RL’s Belarus Service who was convicted in December 2021 on several charges including the “organization and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order” and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Kuznechyk, a web editor for RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, was sentenced in June 2022 to six years in prison following a trial that lasted no more than a few hours. He was convicted of “creating or participating in an extremist organization.”
Yesypenko, a dual Ukrainian-Russian citizen who contributed to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, was sentenced in February 2022 to six years in prison by a Russian judge in occupied Crimea after a closed-door trial. He was convicted of “possession and transport of explosives,” a charge he steadfastly denies.
With reporting by Reuters
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