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Gershkovich has live in Moscow for the past six years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal focused his coverage on Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union. He is accredited as a journalist by the Russian foreign ministry, the Wall Street Journal reported. The last one articlepublished Tuesday, there is about the possibility of the future decline of the Russian economy.
Gershkovich’s arrest comes at a time when the Kremlin has been cracking down on dissent and criticism during the war in Ukraine, which the international community has cursed. In September 2022, the Russian police arrested 1,300 people in an anti-war protest after President Vladimir Putin announced that citizens would be drafted for war against Ukraine. More recently, Russian father punished to two years in prison after his 13-year-old daughter created pro-Ukraine art with the slogan “Glory to Ukraine.”
Russia also destroys the media. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Putin signed a law creating a crime to report “fake” news about the war with Ukraine – including simply calling it a war – which has caused many international organizations to lash out suspend report from the country.
The remaining outlets are below censorship, with restricted language and punishment for disobeying the government. According to Reporters Without Borders, journalists have also been the target of attacks while reporting from Ukraine, and eight they were killed in the first six months of the war.
Russian authorities have made high-profile arrests of US citizens before, often on exaggerated or false grounds. On February 17, 2022, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian authorities arrested WNBA player Brittney Griner after vaping cartridges with a small amount of hashish oil found in the trunk. Griner later pleaded guilty to drug charges and had punished to nine years in a Russian penal colony. This case is widely seen as a political movement to put pressure in the United States, which has promised aid to Ukraine. Griner was later released in a prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Gershkovich is the first journalist in more than 30 years to be detained in Russia on espionage charges. In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff, a reporter for US News & World Report, was there arrested by the KGB when he was a Moscow correspondent and was released 20 days later in a prisoner exchange for a Russian government employee who had been arrested by the FBI.
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