2024-07-22 14:53:14
The guilty plea and sentencing of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, accused by Russian authorities of espionage, marks the latest episode in a cycle of arrests and convictions that US officials say is an expression of Russia’s policy of rounding up American prisoners. which could possibly be exchanged for Russians held in Western countries, notes the newspaper quoted by BTA.
A review of Russian court documents and media reports by The Wall Street Journal shows that at least 20 American citizens and dual Russian-American citizens are being held in Russian prisons and labor camps.
Since Gershkovich’s arrest in March of last year, six Americans or dual US-Russian nationals have been arrested, the newspaper said.
“They are holding these Americans as potential leverage for future negotiations,” said William Pomeranz, former director of the Cannon Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington and an expert on the Russian legal system.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “in the lead as he will control the timeline for any deal,” Pomeranz added.
“Russia doesn’t have a lot of leverage to influence US policy, other than increasing the consequences for detained Americans,” he says.
The Russian Embassy in Washington has not yet responded to The Wall Street Journal’s request for comment.
Russian authorities detained Gershkovich while he was on a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles (about 1,450 km) east of Moscow. In June, prosecutors in Russia filed an indictment against Gershkovich, falsely alleging that he collected information about a Russian defense contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The authorities have not provided public evidence to support their claims, which Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal and the US have categorically and repeatedly denied.
Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Friday, the newspaper noted.
The journalist is one of two Americans the US State Department has identified as being wrongfully detained in Russia, a step that allows the president’s special envoy for hostage issues to commit to the defense of an American citizen.
The other known figure, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine convicted in 2020 of espionage — a charge he and the U.S. both deny — is serving a 16-year sentence at the IK-17 penal colony in the autonomous republic of Mordovia, about 300 miles away. (about 480 km) east of Moscow.
Although Gershkovich and Whelan receive high-level support from the United States, the State Department continues to grant wrongful-detainer status to a number of still-unsolved cases, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“The State Department continually reviews the circumstances surrounding the detention of American citizens abroad, including in Russia, for indicators that they are being wrongfully detained,” a State Department spokeswoman said. “When making assessments, the agency conducts a legal, fact-based review that considers all the circumstances of each case,” she added.
Alsou Kurmasheva, who has dual American and Russian citizenship and works as a journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a media organization funded by the US government, traveled from her home in Prague last spring to visit her ailing mother in Kazan, about 450 miles (about 725 km) east of Moscow. Detained last October on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent, Kurmasheva was also charged with spreading false information about the Russian military. She helped edit a book that criticized Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Forty-seven-year-old Kurmasheva has denied the allegations against her through her husband and her legal team.
Kurmasheva’s supporters say Russian authorities targeted her because she is a journalist with an American passport, and are campaigning to have the US State Department declare her wrongfully detained.
“Alsu is not a criminal,” her husband Pavel Butorin wrote on the X social platform, after a court hearing extended Kurmasheva’s pretrial detention until August this May. “She is not an activist, she is not a member of the Russian opposition and she does not pose a threat to the Russian government,” he added.
Ksenia Karelina, who also holds dual US and Russian citizenship and lives in the state of California, was charged with treason in February while she was visiting her family in Yekaterinburg. Karelin is said to have made a small financial donation to a Ukrainian humanitarian organization, which Russian authorities say benefited the military in Kiev, the Wall Street Journal reported.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia tightened treason laws and stifled dissent inside the country. Karelina faces a possible life sentence, the newspaper noted. She has not publicly responded to the accusation.
In December, authorities in St. Petersburg charged Yuri Malev, a dual American and Russian citizen who was visiting Russia, with desecrating the Strip of St. Georgi (a Russian military symbol in memory of the veterans of the Eastern Front during the Second World War, note ed.) in a post uploaded to social networks, according to the TASS agency. The black and orange ribbon – a sign of bravery and patriotism from the Russian tsarist era – has become a symbol of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. Malev, who worked as a security guard at a sports complex in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty to charges of “rehabilitating Nazism” and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison, TASS reported.
“American citizens are now being persecuted because there is a phobia that is perpetuated in the mass media and in the public sector,” said Maria Bast, president of the Association of Russian Human Rights Lawyers. “Of course, this is primarily a political topic,” she added.
Not all cases involving Americans in Russia are overtly political. In cases dating back to at least 2011, Americans and dual US-Russian citizens have been charged with crimes including murder, assault, robbery, arson, fraud, bribery, smuggling, forgery, and drug-related offenses and sex. Yet, as tensions rise between the two countries over Russia’s war on Ukraine and the continued supply of lethal weapons aid from Washington to Kiev, even purely criminal cases—and their outcomes—take on at least the character of criminal cases. bias, commented in “Wall Street Journal”.