U.S.-Russia Relations Hit New Low Amid Arrest of American Reporter

Washington D.C./31.03.23/Turan:   The Biden administration on Thursday expressed its "deep concern" about the Russian detention of the Wall Street Journal's reporter Evan Gershkovich, as he became the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Moscow since September 1986, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports. 

"In the strongest possible terms, we condemn the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

The administration officials have been in touch with Gershkovich’s family, his newspaper, as well as Russia’s government, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “The charge of espionage is ridiculous,” she added.

Gershkovich was detained in Yekaterinburg as the Russian Federal Security Service, aka FSB, accused him of attempting to collect a state secret on the country's military-industrial complex, allegations that he and his supporters reject.

The State Department said it's unclear if a larger pattern of Moscow detaining foreign journalists will emerge, but noted it was not unusual for Putin's Russia to arrest reporters.

"... We have seen the Russian Government’s escalating repression against journalists and to civil society voices and the broader Russian community for quite some time,"  Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told a daily press briefing in response to TURAN's questions.

"Since February 24th, since they began their brutal assault on Ukraine, dozens of outlets and more than a hundred individual media professionals have been labeled as undesirable organizations or foreign agents for simply just doing their job," Patel went on to add.

Asked by TURAN whether this action is seen as intimidation of Western reporters in Russia who are trying to unearth the truth, Patel said, he wouldn't "speculate", adding however  "my message to any American citizen inside the Russian Federation right now is that our Travel Advisory Warning is a Level 4.  And if you are an American citizen in Russia, you should leave, and if you need assistance doing so, our embassy in Moscow is ready to help engage on this."

Gershkovich has worked in Russia since 2017 and his most recent coverages include the impact of Western sanctions on Russia's economy, Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow and other key topics.

With his detention, Russia "has shown the world that it is expanding its war on press freedoms to a new front," said the Club of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA in a Thursday night statement.

"After years of clamping down on free expression and independent media voices domestically, Moscow is now targeting foreign reporters in what appears to bea clumsy attempt to block scrutiny of its illegal war in Ukraine," the organization said.

Alex Raufoglu