How released US journalist Evan Gershkovich was caught in oppression his parents had fled

He was fulfilling his dream of becoming a foreign correspondent, but he ended up spending his 32nd birthday in Lefortovo, a notorious Moscow prison.

“When I heard the name, it was complete horror,” his mother told the Journal.

The ordeal began on March, 29, 2023, when Gershkovich was detained in Yekaterinburg, just east of the Ural Mountains. Russian prosecutors said in vague statements about the case that “under instructions from the CIA” and “using painstaking conspiratorial methods,” he “was collecting secret information” about a factory that produced tanks and other weapons.

The Journal said Gershkovich had been trying to interview factory workers as part of his job, noting that the Russian Foreign Ministry had repeatedly renewed his press credentials. Both the United States government and the newspaper called the charges a “sham,” with the arrest widely seen as an effort by the Kremlin to seize an American hostage who could be traded for Russians held in the West.

The Kremlin was most interested in Vadim Krasikov of Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, which was previously known as the KGB. Krasikov was jailed for life in Germany after assassinating a Chechen separatist leader in a Berlin park in 2019. Krasikov was released Thursday as part of the deal, along with seven other Russians held by various countries, including the United States.

Gershkovich spent nearly 15 months in Lefortovo, used by successive Russian and Soviet governments to incarcerate political and other prisoners for more than 100 years.

His trial began in late June in Yekaterinburg, with Gershkovich, his head freshly shaved like all prisoners’, standing in the glass courtroom cage used for defendants in Russian trials. On July 19, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges in a secret trial conducted with unusual speed, a sign that a prisoner-exchange deal was already in the works, experts say.

While in Lefortovo, Gershkovich made his way through Russian literary classics like “War and Peace” and delighted in care packages filled with food and delivered by friends. He tried to keep himself in shape during the hourlong exercise period he was permitted each day.

Friends who corresponded with him described him as positive, strong and rarely discouraged, despite facing the official wrath of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

While living in Moscow, Gershkovich was part of a coterie of young Western and Russian journalists. They took seriously their role of explaining Russia to outsiders, constantly working to improve their command of the language, traveling extensively and sharing a traditional weekend cottage in Peredelkino, a hamlet on Moscow’s outskirts known as a retreat for writers.

Gershkovich adopted the nickname Vanya and relished Russian rituals like saunas and mushroom hunting, along with sports including soccer and skiing, friends said.

But the climate for journalists in Russia turned threatening with the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin passed draconian laws limiting how the war could be described and shuttered numerous independent Russian outlets.

Gershkovich was among the many journalists who left the country at that time, but he returned periodically to gauge how the conflict was changing Russia. Given that no Western correspondent had been charged with spying since the Soviet era, the prospect of imprisonment seemed remote, if also troubling. He was the first foreign correspondent charged with espionage since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

In prison, Gershkovich played slow-moving chess with his father, painstakingly exchanging moves by mail. While awaiting his release, his father told the Journal, “I will be just happy to play a face-to-face game of chess with him.”