US Ambassador to Moscow Granted Visit to See Jailed Journalist

WASHINGTON — The U.S. ambassador to Russia on Thursday visited American journalist Evan Gershkovich at Lefortovo Prison in Moscow.

Following Ambassador Lynne Tracy’s visit, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said that Gershkovich “remains resilient and is grateful for the support of friends, family and supporters.”

“We continue to call for Evan’s immediate release,” the embassy said in a statement on its Telegram channel.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been detained for nearly 10 months on espionage charges that he denies.

He is one of two American journalists detained by Russia in 2023. The other, Alsu Kurmasheva, works with VOA’s sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague and was detained while in Russia to see family.

While the U.S. State Department declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained shortly after his arrest, it has still not made that designation for Kurmasheva, who has spent more than 90 days in custody.

The Journal welcomed the latest consular visit as “important for Evan and his family."

“We appreciate the U.S. government’s ongoing support for his well being,” the newspaper said in a statement.

In the nearly 10 months since Gershkovich was jailed, the Russian government has not publicly provided evidence to back up the spying allegations against the reporter. He is being held in pretrial detention and will remain in custody until at least the end of January.

At a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker that her son was “doing the best that he can under the circumstances, and the circumstances are very hard.”

Russia’s Washington embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

While Gershkovich approaches 10 months in jail, fellow American journalist Kurmasheva this week passed the three-month mark.

The dual U.S.-Russian citizen wrote a letter to her friends and colleagues, part of which her husband posted on the social media platform X.

“You admire my courage in coming [to Russia] at ‘such a time.’ But we live in the present, and we won’t have any ‘other’ time. ‘Time’ will, of course, exist, but someone close to you, someone who needs your help, may no longer be there,” Kurmasheva wrote.

“No one will give me back the three months of my life that I’ve now spent where I shouldn’t be. I am responsible for my family. For my young children, for my elderly mother,” Kurmasheva said.

“Today, I’m looking at your postcards with images of open doors and windows. You are strong and confident. You will definitely find the right answers to your questions. Open doors for yourself and others; don’t be afraid of it. I am very grateful to you,” Kurmasheva said.

An editor at RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service, Kurmasheva traveled to Russia in May 2023 for a family emergency. Her passports were confiscated when she tried to leave the country in June, and she was waiting for her passports to be returned when authorities detained her in October.

Kurmasheva was initially charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent,” but Russian authorities in December added an additional charge of spreading false information about Russia’s military.

Kurmasheva and her outlet reject the charges, which carry a combined sentence of up to 15 years in prison. She will be held in pretrial detention until at least February.

Her husband, Pavel Butorin, called for her release in a post on X.

“The Russian government must drop its absurd charges against Alsu, release her from detention, and allow her to leave Russia and return to her family,” he wrote.

Butorin is the director of Current Time TV, a Russian-language TV and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA.

Since Kurmasheva’s jailing, her employer and press freedom groups have urged the U.S. State Department to declare Kurmasheva wrongfully detained, which would open additional resources to help secure her release.

When asked about why Kurmasheva has not been declared wrongfully detained, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Thursday told reporters, “I would say that it is a case that we continue to focus an enormous amount of attention on. It’s something we continue to look into.

“And as I have said a number of times, that just because we have not made a wrongful detention determination at any point does not indicate anything about the work that we are doing or about what our future posture may be,” Miller said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday ranked Russia as the fourth-worst jailer of journalists in the world for 2023, with 22 reporters behind bars. Of those, 12 are foreign nationals.

In addition to Kurmasheva and Gershkovich, the other 10 foreign reporters are Ukrainian.

Paul Beckett, a Washington-based assistant editor at the Journal who is leading the newspaper’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release, told VOA that the disproportionate number of foreign journalists held by Moscow “shows the antipathy that they have toward independent reporting.”