Even after a year in Russian custody, US reporter Evan Gershkovich cannot hope to be released soon. His family is striving for optimism and colleagues are calling on the government to do more.
“We remain optimistic because we know that the US government is taking Evans’ case very seriously,” said the mother of the journalist imprisoned in Russia, Ella Milman. She and her husband fled the Soviet Union at the end of the 1970s. Since then, the family has lived in New York and in Princeton, New Jersey, where Evan Gershkovich was born in 1991.
“The game is over if you allow pessimism,” said Gershkovich’s mother in a TV interview with ABC News: “In our family we always say we’re looking forward.”
After all, Milman is in regular contact with her son, who has now been in Russian custody for a year on suspicion of espionage. “We write letters to each other,” she says, “Evan is trying to protect us. We protect him.”
Colleagues remember prisoners
On the anniversary, the case is receiving more attention again: Emily Wilkins, President of the journalists’ organization National Press Club, recalled at a panel discussion in Washington that for the first time since the Cold War an American journalist is in a Russian prison.
His pre-trial detention was just extended by three months until the end of June, but few in the US believe that the 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter will be exonerated by the Russian justice system and released.
“In 99 percent of all similar cases, espionage suspects in Russia are convicted,” points out Jason Conti. The lawyer works for the business news platform Dow Jones.
““There won’t be any super-lawyers coming in here and kicking him out,” said Conti, “this has to be solved diplomatically.” In other words: All hope rests on the Biden government.
Biden’s promise
US President Joe Biden recently promised that his government is working around the clock to bring Evan and the ex-elite soldier Paul Whelan, who has been in Russian custody since 2018, home again in his State of the Union speech.
The National Press Club’s Wilkins urges that these words be followed by more committed action: “You have to do more, you have to go harder for journalists!”
In any case, Gershkovich, who learned his fluent Russian at home, is also missing from his newspaper as a knowledgeable reporter, says the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker: “Now we no longer have anyone on site in Russia,” she complains.
The Wall Street Journal is no different than other US media, whose correspondents were all withdrawn after Gershkovich’s arrest. That is the larger dimension of the case.
Sebastian Hesse, ARD Washington, tagesschau, March 28, 2024 10:54 a.m