Thousands join campaign to free US journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention

#FreeEvan banners have been unfurled at baseball games, posters erected in news organisations from the UK to Australia, and last week the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to immediately release the 31-year-old.

A GoFundMe page has raised about $US100,000 so far with the proceeds going to the Gershkovich family to help towards efforts to bring their son home.

US president Joe Biden has demanded the wrongly-detained journalist be freed and more than three dozen US senators have written to Mr Gershkovich in prison showing their support for him.

The senators’ letter expressed their “profound anger and concern” over his detention by the Russian government.

“We applaud you for your efforts to report the truth about Russia’s reprehensible invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that has resulted in untellable atrocities, tragedies, and loss of life.,” the letter stated.

The senators said the “free press is crucial to the foundation and support of human rights everywhere,” and that every day Mr Gershkovich spends in a Russian prison “is a day too long.”

Mr Gershkovich was arrested by Russian security services on March 29 while on a reporting trip in the Russian provincial city of Yekaterinburg, about 1500km east of Moscow.

He is accused of espionage in the interests of a foreign state, making him the first journalist detained in Russia on spying charges since the Cold War.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the US government vehemently deny he is a spy; the White House has said Mr Gershkovich has never worked for the government.

He is currently being held in the notorious Lefortovo prison, run by the Russian Federal Security Bureau, with minimal access to the outside world. The prison has held accused spies, dissidents, political prisoners and hardened criminals as well as high-profile inmates including Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the plotters against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Former US Marine Paul Whelan was also held in Lefortovo on spying charges, though he is now imprisoned prison after being convicted and receiving a 16 year sentence.

Mr Gershkovich was reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when he was arrested, and has so far been detained for 79 days.

Before joining the Journal in January 2022, Mr Gershkovich was a reporter for Agence France-Presse and the Moscow Times. He was also a news assistant at the New York Times.

The American son of Soviet-born Jewish exiles, Mr Gershkovich grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Bowdoin College before being hired as a news assistant by the New York Times in 2016. He moved to Russia in 2017 to begin his international reporting career at the Moscow Times.

Mr Gershkovich won awards for his reporting, including coverage of the environmental impact of salmon farming and the preservation of minority languages in Russia.

He joined the Wall Street Journal in January 2022 and travelled to the Belarus-Ukraine border a month later, becoming the only American reporter to witness the first wounded Russian forces being taken home.

His parents Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich travelled from Philadelphia to Moscow to attend his first day in court.

During the hearing, the Russian court extended Mr Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention another three months until at least August 30 after investigators requested more time to put their case together.

The WSJ has reported that in complex criminal cases in Russia, the period of detention before trial can be extended for up to 12 months. In the case of Paul Whelan he was held for 15 months before trial.

A further extension can be granted in exceptional circumstances. As a result, defendants can remain in prison for months while prosecutors and investigators assemble their case.

Espionage trials are usually heard by judges behind closed doors as like other countries, evidence is often deemed classified, meaning that Mr Gershkovich’s case is likely to be held in secret. He faces up to 20 years in jail.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, which is known as the FSB, has said Mr Gershkovich “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

They have not provide any evidence to back up their claim.

Mr Gershkovich was a prolific contributor, writing about all aspects of life in Russia, but in particular the war.

Among his last stories was a piece about how Russia’s economy was buckling under the strain of the Ukraine war amid fears the state was running out of cash.

Mr Gershkovich was very busy on social media as well, with more than 24,000 followers.

Among his last Twitter posts was a retweet of a story about “How to flee house arrest in Russia”.

He was sharing a Washington Post story giving tips from escapees about the best time to run, how to evade the police, and get out of the country – not knowing that his own arrest was just days away.

Then his Twitter feed fell silent.

Originally published as Thousands join campaign to free US journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russian detention