Evan Gershkovich, a U.S citizen based in Moscow as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, spent 16 months in prison in Russia after being arrested on spurious espionage charges before he was freed as part of a prisoner exchange in August 2024 and returned to the United States.
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023, and in July 2024 a Russian court found him guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Gershkovich, his newspaper and the U.S. government all denied the allegation that he was a spy.
Gershkovich was released alongside Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) editor Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, as part of a prisoner exchange on August 1, 2024.
Before his arrest, Gershkovich had lived in Moscow for six years, was accredited with the Russian Foreign Ministry, and was covering Russia as part of The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau. He had reported extensively about Russia’s war in Ukraine, its impact on — and perception within — the country, and the repression of the anti-war movement.
Case history
On March 30, 2023, Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, said it had detained Gershkovich, who was on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, on suspicion of spying for the United States. The FSB alleged Gershkovich was trying to obtain classified information related to “the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
On March 31, 2023, CPJ and more than 30 global media organizations and press freedom groups sent a letter to Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., calling for the journalist’s immediate release.
On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” launching a broad U.S. government effort to exert pressure on Russia to free him.
A Moscow court extended Gershkovich’s detention several times after his arrest.
A June 2024 indictment accused Gershkovich of collecting “secret information” for the CIA on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region.
Gershkovich’s closed-door trial started on June 26, 2024, in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. A second hearing took place on July 18, when the court announced that it had completed its judicial investigation. The next day, the court heard arguments from both sides, and a judge handed down a 16-year prison term against the journalist.