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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:36:03 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Congressional leaders demand Russia release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan GershkovichIn a rare joint statement, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives have condemned Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and called for his release. “Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has now spent a year wrongfully detained by Putin’s government. We continue to condemn his baseless arrest, fabricated charges, and unjust imprisonment,” reads the statement from Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. They continue: Forty-five years ago, Evan’s parents, Ella and Mikhail Gershkovich, found refuge in the United States after fleeing the Soviet Union. Today, Putin is restoring Soviet-style control through repression at home and aggression abroad.
On the anniversary of Evan Gershkovich’s captivity, we reaffirm the importance of his work. Journalism is not a crime, and reporters are not bargaining chips. The Kremlin’s attempts to silence Evan and intimidate other Western reporters will not impede the pursuit of truth.
We repeat our call for the Russian government to release Evan, Paul Whelan, and others it has wrongfully detained without further delay.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:40:02 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:40:49 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden condemns Evan Gershkovich's 'wrongful detention' in Russia on anniversary of arrestJoe Biden has joined in on calling for Russia to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested one year ago today. “Today we mark a painful anniversary: one year of American journalist Evan Gershkovich’s wrongful detention in Russia,” the president said in a statement. Here’s more: Journalism is not a crime, and Evan went to Russia to do his job as a reporter — risking his safety to shine the light of truth on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine. Shortly after his wholly unjust and illegal detention, he drafted a letter to his family from prison, writing: “I am not losing hope.”
As I have told Evan’s parents, I will never give up hope either. We will continue working every day to secure his release. We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia’s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips. And we will continue to stand strong against all those who seek to attack the press or target journalists — the pillars of free society.
To Evan, to Paul Whelan, and to all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad: We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring you home.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:41:41 GMT -5
(The Guardian) During an Oval Office meeting with Olaf Scholz last month, Joe Biden proposed to the German chancellor that he authorize the release of a Russian hitman serving life in prison for murder, in hopes of coaxing Vladimir Putin to release three high-profile prisoners. These included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, ex-Marine Paul Whelan and prominent Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. But as the Journal reports, the proposal went nowhere because Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony a week later. Now, it’s not clear what Putin wants in order to secure the release of the detained Americans. Here’s more on the story, from the Journal: It was the most shocking of a series of setbacks in secret prisoner talks between Washington and Moscow that have now bedeviled two U.S. presidencies.
America once had only one prisoner it considered wrongfully jailed in Russia, the 54-year-old Whelan. But through nearly six years of intense and combative negotiations, Putin has run up the score, stockpiling his prisons with Americans to swap for the very few Russians abroad he cares to bring back.
Both Presidents Biden and Trump found themselves facing the crude asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia, whose leader of a quarter-century can order foreigners plucked from their hotel rooms and sentenced to decades on spurious charges.
Putin, whom Biden called “a butcher,” hasn’t been a normal negotiating partner. After news of Navalny’s sudden death interrupted an annual lunch among chiefs of the leading Western security agencies, several attendees immediately wondered if the Russian ruler had ordered a hit. Weeks later, the U.S. hasn’t offered a public assessment of how he died, while Russia has cited only “natural causes.”
At the same time, America has been an easy mark, polarized by its culture wars and susceptible to the power of celebrity-driven campaigns that leveled a degree of pressure on the White House never felt by the Kremlin.
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Post by Webster on Mar 29, 2024 13:42:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Here’s more of what we know about Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention in Russia, one year on: Joe Biden on Friday said the US was working every day to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich on the first anniversary of the 32-year-old Wall Street journalist’s detention in Russia on charges of spying that he and the US government vehemently reject.
“Journalism is not a crime, and Evan went to Russia to do his job as a reporter – risking his safety to shine the light of truth on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine,” Biden said in a statement on Friday.
Gershkovich was arrested while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg and he became the first American reporter to be detained in Russia accused of espionage since the cold war.
The Wall Street Journal, the New York-based, Murdoch-owned daily financial and news publication, published a dramatic front page on Friday, posting an image on X, formerly Twitter, featuring a large blank space under the headline “His story should be here”. Next to the stark space are articles about what the reporter has lost in the last year and a piece titled “Authoritarians Threaten Journalists Around Globe”.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, alleges Gershkovich was acting on US orders to collect state secrets – but provided no evidence to support the accusation, which he, the Journal and the US government deny. Washington has designated him as wrongfully detained and US officials are engaged on several fronts in efforts to free the reporter.
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