Early 2022, Evan Gershkovich, Wall Street Journal reporter wrote on social media that “reporting on Russia has now also become a regular habit, where you see people you know locked up for years.”
A year later, he was the one locked up — arrested in March 2023 on espionage charges that his employer and the U.S. government have called trumped-up. On Friday, he was convicted and convicted up to 16 years in prison.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) alleged that the 32-year-old journalist was acting on US orders to collect state secrets, but provided no evidence to support the accusation. Washington has labeled him as wrongfully detained.
The arrest of Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War, came as a shock, even as Russia has introduced increasingly repressive free speech laws since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“He was accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry. There was nothing to indicate that this would happen,” Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor in chief, said in a March interview.
Since the invasion, Russian authorities have multiple US citizens and other Westerners, and Gershkovich knew the risks, said Francesca Ebel, a correspondent and friend of the Washington Post.
After his arrest, he “knew from the beginning that this was going to take a long time,” she said.
Since his arrest, Gershkovich has appeared in Russian courts more than a dozen times, first in Moscow, where he was held in the infamous Lefortovo prisonand then at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg.
His appearances before the trial became almost formulaic, as Gershkovich was repeatedly led in handcuffs from a prison van to a glass cage of the defendants, offering his family and friends both a painful reminder of his detention and a chance to see him.
“It’s always a mixed feeling. I’m happy to see him and that he’s okay, but it’s a reminder that he’s not here. We want him home,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told The Associated Press in an interview in March.
Although Gershkovich was often seen smiling during his brief appearances, friends and family said he found it difficult to face a wall of cameras trained on him, as if he were an animal in a zoo.
When his trial began behind closed doors on June 26, Gershkovich stood in the defendant’s cage with a shaved head, while the media was briefly allowed into the courtroom.
It was the last time Gershkovich’s friends and family could see him until he was sentenced.
Now that he has been found guilty, there will likely be few opportunities to see him, and friends and family can only hope that he will be released through a prisoner exchange.
But no one knows when that will be.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the United Nations on Wednesday that talks are underway about an exchange involving Gershkovich. Russia has previously raised the possibility of a swap but said a ruling was needed first. Even now, such a deal could take months or years.
The Journal’s Tucker said she’s “optimistic that 2024 will be the year Evan is released, but I’m also realistic,” noting that any negotiations over a swap are taking place against a “very feverish” backdrop.
Gershkovich was the son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey. He spoke fluent Russian and moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper. In 2022, he was hired by the Journal.
“He loved it,” Milman said of her son’s life in Moscow.
He threw himself into his work and befriended other reporters, going to traditional Russian saunas, cycling around Moscow or having barbecues in the countryside.
Friends and family say Gershkovich now relies on his sense of humor to get through the days.
In Lefortovo, Gershkovich was not allowed to make phone calls and “woke up every morning against the same gray prison wall,” according to his friend Polina Ivanova of the Financial Times.
He was allowed out of his cell for an hour each day to exercise, and the rest of his time was spent mainly reading and writing letters.
Mikhail Gershkovich wrote to his son about chess strategy, and Gershkovich tried to teach his cellmate the game. They also discussed artificial intelligence because “he wants to be up-to-date when he comes back,” his father said.
From prison, he arranged gifts for his friends on their birthdays and sent flowers to important women in his life for International Women’s Day earlier this month.
“He tells people not to panic,” said Milman, who noted that her son is a source of great pride for the family.
But now that there seems to be no end in sight to his captivity, the pressure on them is becoming increasingly apparent.
Milman said, “Every day I wake up and look at the clock.”
“I think about whether his lunchtime is over, and his bedtime,” she said. “It’s really hard. It takes a toll.”