U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has formally determined that Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been wrongfully detained by Russia, a finding that authorizes the U.S. to negotiate on his behalf.
“Journalism is not a crime,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement on Monday. “We condemn the Kremlin’s continued repression of independent voices in Russia, and its ongoing war against the truth.”
Blinken had already assailed Gershkovich’s detention on espionage charges, telling reporters that “in my own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia.” But the State Department was still going through the process of making that finding official.
The U.S. government repeatedly has pushed for access to Gershkovich, an American citizen who has been accredited as a journalist by the Russian foreign ministry.
Blinken also demanded Gershkovich’s release in a rare call with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, during which the top U.S. diplomat also urged the Kremlin to release former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and later received a 16-year prison term.
Yet negotiations with Russia may not take place soon. Officials in Moscow have emphasized that they normally don’t consider prisoner releases or swaps until after a trial and conviction.
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(Bloomberg News writer Jordan Fabian contributed to this story.)
