Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken today, Sunday, that Washington would not accept the politicization of the case of Wall Street Journal reporter Ivan Gershkovich, who is accused of spying in Russia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Russian minister told his American counterpart in a telephone conversation initiated by the American side that the fate of Gershkovich would be decided by the court.

In a rare phone call since the start of the war in Ukraine, Anthony Blinken urged his Russian counterpart to immediately release Gerskovich who was arrested last week, as well as another American prisoner, Paul Whelan, the State Department said.

Whelan, a businessman from Michigan, has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on charges of espionage that his family and the US government have called unfounded. He is serving a 16-year sentence.

According to the State Department, Blinken and Lavrov also discussed “the importance of creating an enabling environment for diplomatic missions to do their jobs.”

Another incident

The arrest of Ivan Gershkovich, an American correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Moscow, on charges of espionage is another incident that will further undermine US-Russian relations.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in a statement accused the 32-year-old Gershkovich of “receiving instructions from the United States to collect information about one of the Russian military industry companies, which constitutes a state secret.”

“The FSB stopped the illegal activities of a correspondent accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry (…) of the Moscow branch of the American newspaper Wall Street Journal, US citizen Ivan Gershkovich.”

Gershkovich was taken into custody in Yekaterinburg, a city about 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow in the Urals, according to Russian state media. A few hours after the FSB statement, the Kremlin commented on the journalist’s detention. “We are not talking about suspicions,” said Dmitry Peskov. “He was caught red-handed,” he added, without going into details.

What the Wall Street Journal says

For its part, the Wall Street Journal said it “categorically denies the FSB allegations and calls for the immediate release of the trusted and dedicated journalist.” She even expressed her solidarity with both Gerskovich and his family.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal demanded the immediate release of Ivan Gershkovich, whose arrest and accusations the US President called “ridiculous.”

reactions

The public organization Reporters Without Borders expressed concern about the arrest, which, in its words, “looks like revenge.” According to Reporters Without Borders, Gerskovich was investigating Wagner, a military mercenary organization fighting alongside Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Russian diplomacy insisted that the journalist was “caught red-handed.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram that the actions of the Wall Street Journal correspondent “have nothing to do with journalism.”

France expressed concern, urging Moscow to respect freedom of the press. “We are particularly concerned and condemn Russia’s repressive stance” against both the Russian and foreign press, French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Clair Lesondre said at a briefing.

This is the first arrest of an American journalist in Russia on charges of espionage since the September 1986 KGB arrest of Nikolai Danilov, US News and World Report correspondent in Moscow. Danilov was released 20 days later in exchange for a member of the Soviet Union mission to the UN arrested by the FBI.

Who is Ivan Gershkovich?

Gerskovich has been with the WSJ in Russia since January 2022, having previously worked for AFP and the Moscow Times. Prior to that, he was a news assistant at The New York Times.

In recent months, Gershkovich has been writing articles about the Russian economy, as well as the war in Pskov, a city in western Russia that is the base of the airborne division that captured the Ukrainian Butsa, where Russian soldiers are accused of atrocities.

ChTD’s Telegram channel, linked to exiled Russian tycoon and Vladimir Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, called Gershkovich a “hostage.”

Ivan Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Espionage trials in Russia can take months and are usually held in secret.

In his latest article, published earlier this week, Gershkovich focuses on the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.

According to CNN, Associated Press, New York Times, AFP, Reuters.