White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that the release of U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich, who works for The Wall Street Journal and was arrested last Thursday in Russia for an alleged espionage-related crime, is a «priority» for Biden.
We will continue to call for the release of Evan Gershkovic. As I said, these charges are ridiculous. Evan is not a spy and never has been. He has never worked for the U.S. government. He is an independent journalist (…), as you all know,» the spokeswoman explained.
Jean-Pierre explained that the State Department is negotiating the situation, so that teams from the National Security Council, several State Department offices, including the special envoy for Hostage Affairs, and another U.S. government agency will work together in collaboration with colleagues inside and outside the government to develop a strategy to secure the release.
Russian authorities detained Gershkovich in the city of Yekaterinburg. The journalist faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison on suspicion of »acting on orders from the United States to gather information constituting state secrets about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.»
In particular, he was allegedly gathering information about the Wagner Group, owned by oligarch Yevgeni Prigozhin, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who has sent mercenaries to Ukraine. Gershkovich’s last article published by ‘The Wall Street Journal’ dates from March 28 under the headline ‘Russia’s economy is starting to crumble’.
Gershkovich previously worked for the French news agency AFP and the Russian daily ‘The Moscow Times’. He has also published in ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Economist’, ‘MIT Technology Review’, ‘Foreign Policy’ and Politico Europe, among other media, according to his website.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had a telephone conversation over the weekend with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, to discuss Gershkovich’s situation.
Lavrov stressed that »Gershkovich was caught red-handed while trying to obtain secret information classified as a state secret by taking advantage of his status as a journalist,» according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
