Russia arrested Wall Street Journal reporter for alleged espionage

He was just doing his job!

A reporter from the Wall Street Journal has been arrested in Yekaterinburg, according to Russian sources. The Interfax news agency quoted the Russian domestic secret service FSB as saying that the journalist Evan Gerschkowitsch has been arrested in the Russian city in the Urals on suspicion of espionage.

► “It was established that Evan Gershkovich, on instructions from the American side, collected information on the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex, which constitutes a state secret. A foreigner was arrested in Yekaterinburg trying to obtain classified information,” the FSB said.

The secret service did not say when the arrest took place. What is certain, however, is that the reporter is now threatened with up to 20 years in a prison camp.

Gershkovich reports on Russia and Ukraine as a correspondent in the Moscow bureau of the Wall Street Journal. He is accredited by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to work as a journalist.

In his latest report from Moscow, published earlier this week, he wrote about the slowdown in Russia’s economy due to Western sanctions imposed when Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year.