According to regional media, American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been legally charged with espionage in Russia.
Mr. Gershkovich, a seasoned journalist for Russia for the Wall Street Journal, was held last week in Yekaterinburg (WSJ).
He was against of the accusations which was made against him. His immediate release has been urged by the press.
After his imprisonment, the Kremlin said he had been “caught red-handed.”
The 31-year-old Mr. Gershkovich is well-liked by foreign reporters in Moscow, and BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg praises him as a superb reporter and a journalist with strong ethical standards.
His incarceration was denounced by the White House “in the harshest terms.”
Also, the leaders of the Senate’s Republican and Democratic parties, Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell, harshly denounced his incarceration on Friday in a rare joint statement.
Daily news digest“Journalism is not unlawful,” they said. “We demand that Mr. Gershkovich be released immediately and that the fabricated charges against him be dropped.”
US authorities claim they have tried to see Mr. Gershkovich but have not been successful. The WSJ, however, said that his attorneys had access to him.
The problem of consular access was being rectified, according to the Russian foreign ministry, but it added that the “fuss in the US over this matter, which was intended at pressurizing the Russian authorities… was useless and pointless.”
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Accordint to the source the journalist lost contact with everyone on wednesday in the afternoon while reporting from Yekaterinburg which is located around 1000 miles east moscow
US authorities said that when Mr. Gershkovich’s chauffeur took him off at a restaurant, his phone had been switched off two hours later. According to the topnewplanet he was not in the city
The security agency of Russia, the FSB, said that it has stopped “illegal activity.” According to the statement, the journalist had been seized while “working on US orders” and had “gathered information on the workings of a Russian military company that is thought to be a state secret.”
He was hauled into prison by the FSB on Friday and forced to remain there until May 29 after being transported before a Lefortovo district court in Moscow.
In Russia, espionage has a 20-year maximum sentence for imprisonment.
Evan Gershkovich wrote on Russia’s failing economy and how the Kremlin was struggling to control “ballooning military spending” while preserving economic stability in his most recent WSJ article, which was published last week. social spending.
He was their to cover the rental firm Wagner which took part in some fighting scenes in eastern ukraine.
He was covering russia from more than a year . In the US, he started his career by working in AFP news and the Moscow times
