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Joe Biden has vowed to continue working to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter held in Russia for a year, as Republicans and Democrats in Washington have united to denounce his incarceration.
“Journalism is not a crime, and Evan went to Russia to do his job as a reporter, risking his safety to shed light on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine,” the US president said on Friday. in a statement.
“We will continue to work every day to secure his release. We will continue to expose and impose costs for Russia’s terrible 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 the free society,” Biden added.
U.S. officials have tried for months to negotiate Gershkovich’s release, along with Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia since 2018. The White House and State Department have been reluctant to discuss details of talks to secure Gershkovich’s release. Gershkovich. the two men, but have indicated that he may be part of a prisoner exchange with Moscow.
Moscow’s arrest of Gershkovich last year came as Russian authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin tightened his control over the country, launching a further crackdown on independent media following the Kremlin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion scale of Ukraine in 2022.
Several Western and independent media outlets were forced to leave the country for fear of retaliation. In February, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony. Putin was re-elected Russian president earlier this month with nearly 90% of the vote.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, reiterated that Russia’s detention of Gershkovich was illegal and criticized Moscow’s crackdown on press freedom.
“To date, Russia has provided no evidence of wrongdoing for one simple reason: Evan did nothing wrong,” Blinken said. “In the year since Evan’s unjust detention, Russia’s already restrictive media landscape has become more oppressive, with a continued attack on independent voices targeting all forms of dissent,” he added.
On Friday morning, congressional leaders from America’s two major political parties issued a rare joint statement supporting the administration’s calls for Gershkovich’s release.
“We continue to condemn his baseless arrest, trumped-up charges and wrongful imprisonment,” said Republicans Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell and Democrats Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
“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,” they added.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023 on espionage charges – in the first case in which Russia has arrested an American reporter for espionage since the Cold War. At the time he was reporting on the Wagner mercenary group.
The American government and the newspaper reject the accusations and call them completely false. The Wall Street Journal said earlier this week that it will continue to do “everything in our power” to secure Gershkovich’s release.