MOSCOW: Russia’s top security agency has arrested an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on espionage charges, the first time a US correspondent was put behind bars on spying accusations since the Cold War.
The Federal Security Service said on Thursday that Evan Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg while allegedly trying to obtain classified information.
The Wall Street Journal said in a statement that it is deeply concerned for Gershkovich’s safety. The arrest comes amid bitter tensions between the West and Moscow over its war in Ukraine.
Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for US News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB.
He was released without charges 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s United Nations mission who was arrested by the FBI. The FSB, which is the top successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, alleged that Gershkovich “was acting on the US orders to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex.”