The Russian intelligence and security service, the FSB, has arrested a correspondent for the American newspaper Wall Street Journal in Yekaterinburg (Ekaterinupol) on charges of espionage.
According to the Russian state news agency Interfax, Evan Gershkovich was arrested because he was instructed by the United States to conduct espionage in Russia.
“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation stopped the illegal activities of US citizen Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, correspondent for the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, who is suspected of spying for the US government,” the Russian security service said. .
According to the FSB, Mr. Gershkovich, “acting on instructions from the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
“An American was detained while trying to obtain classified information in Yekaterinburg,” the intelligence service said in a statement.
In particular, the FSB Investigation Department initiated a criminal case against a US citizen under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on espionage.
The 32-year-old journalist faces up to 20 years in prison.
Mr. Gershkovich is a reporter for the WSJ covering Russia, Ukraine and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Previously, he was a reporter for Agence France-Presse and the Moscow Times, and a news assistant at The New York Times.
Source: Interfax, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
Source: Kathimerini
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