The Jailing of Evan Gershkovich

Evan Gershkovich has devoted his career to the power of bearing witness through on-the-ground reporting.

When Gershkovich was in his mid-20s in 2017, he decided to move to Russia — and quit a job as a news assistant at The New York Times — so that he could report on the country where his parents had been born. He first joined the staff of The Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper, then the Agence France-Presse wire service and last year The Wall Street Journal.

At one point, he slept in a tent for several nights in the Siberian woods to cover forest fires there. During the worst of the pandemic, he spent time in a Moscow hospital writing about medical students trying to treat a surge of patients. And a couple of weeks ago, Gershkovich traveled to the city of Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains, to report on the Russian military.

While he was there, the Russian authorities arrested him for espionage. They have imprisoned him at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail.

The Russian government has offered no evidence that Gershkovich is anything other than a journalist. Our colleague Michael Schwirtz, who has also reported in Russia, calls the charges absurd. They appear to be part of Vladimir Putin’s increasing crackdown on independent sources of information. If you read Gershkovich’s journalism — like his most recently published story, headlined “Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone” — you can imagine why Putin may not like it.

We’re devoting today’s newsletter to Gershkovich — to keep sustained attention on his plight and to highlight the larger threat that it represents. Over the past decade, authoritarianism has been on the march, in Russia, China and elsewhere. Leaders in these countries have tried to establish a monopoly on information by jailing or even killing critics, journalists and human rights advocates.

Jokes and meals

Gershkovich, who grew up in New Jersey as the son of Soviet émigrés, chose to work as a reporter in Russia despite the knowledge that he was taking a risk by being there. “We all knew that working in Russia was risky,” said Anton Troianovski, The Times’s Moscow bureau chief, who left the country last year. “But the journalistic mission was incredibly important.” (Anton goes into more depth in this article.)

“Evan did this work out of a love for Russia,” Valerie Hopkins, another Times correspondent, told us. “He found a way to love this country that has broken so many people’s hearts.” Valerie was still working from Moscow when Gershkovich was detained on March 29, and she left the country a short time later.

Gershkovich’s colleagues and other reporters describe him as funny, generous and cheerfully competitive. He congratulates other journalists when they get a scoop — and enjoys getting his own.

“His bright smile and loud chuckle made you want to be his friend,” Eliot Brown, a Journal reporter, has written. “He’s a magnet for friends, picking them up wherever he travels. He exudes a zest for life, a constant set of jokes and laughs that make you want to hang out more.”

Joshua Yaffa of The New Yorker calls Gershkovich “funny, acerbic and kindhearted, not to mention a skilled chef.”

He has also shown a dedication to helping the world understand Russia. “He was just really committed to telling the whole story, not just being in the comforts of Moscow but really getting out there,” our colleague Anton said, “and talking to people with different points of view, including Putin supporters.” Last month, Gershkovich published a story about a region in northwestern Russia where people continued to support the war despite the rising death toll.

An escalation

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Putin’s government enacted a law that made critical coverage of the invasion punishable by up to 15 years in prison. In response, many Western media organizations temporarily suspended their work in Russia and pulled out their correspondents. Gershkovich was among those who left.

But the government at first seemed to be using the law to target Russian journalists, producing Russian-language journalism, rather than foreigners. As a result, some reporters — including Gershkovich and our colleague Valerie — returned. “Western journalists seemed to have some kind of security that they would not be thrown in jail,” Anton said.

Gershkovich’s arrest has ended that sense of security and suggests that Putin may be escalating his crackdown as the war continues to go badly for Russia. “Evan is Putin’s hostage,” Anton said.

President Biden has called on Russia to release Gershkovich. Experts say that Russia is likely to put him on trial behind closed doors and that the outcome is predetermined. “This is going to be just a show,” Anton said. “They always get a guilty verdict.”

In some previous cases, foreign political prisoners in Russia have remained locked up for extended periods. In others, Putin has been willing to release foreigners as part of a prisoner swap after they have been convicted.

Experts say that Russian authorities are likely keeping Gershkovich in isolation, but they did allow his lawyers to visit him last week. A prison monitor who also visited reported that Gershkovich was reading “Life and Fate,” a novel about totalitarianism, written in the 1950s by an author born in present-day Ukraine.

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