US journalist marks a year in a Russian prison as courts keep extending his time behind bars
For Evan Gershkovich, the dozen appearances in Moscow's courts over the past year have fallen into a pattern.
Guards take the American journalist from the notorious Lefortovo Prison in a van for the short drive to the courthouse. He's led in handcuffs to a defendants' cage in front of a judge for yet another hearing about his pretrial detention on espionage charges.
The proceedings are always closed. His appeals are always rejected, and his time behind bars is always extended. Then it's back to Lefortovo.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is escorted from a court hearing Jan. 26 in Moscow, Russia.
Gershkovich was arrested a year ago Friday while on a reporting trip for The Wall Street Journal to the city of Yekaterinburg.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, alleges he was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to support the accusation, which he, the Journal and the U.S. government deny. The U.S. designated him as wrongfully detained.
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Periodic court hearings give Gershkovich's family, friends and U.S. officials a glimpse of him, and for the 32-year-old journalist, it's a break from his largely monotonous prison routine.
"It's always a mixed feeling," Gershkovich's mother, Ella Milman, told The Associated Press. "I'm happy to see him and that he's doing well, but it's a reminder that he is not with us. We want him at home."
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a defendants’ cage Sept. 19 at a hearing in Moscow, Russia.
Though Gershkovich is often seen smiling in the brief court appearances, friends and relatives say he finds it hard to face a wall of cameras pointing at him as if he were an animal in a zoo.
Ahead of the most recent hearing Tuesday, Milman was particularly interested to see him. She was waiting, she said, for "a big reveal" — Gershkovich's cellmate gave him a haircut.
The hearing itself offered no new revelations on his case: He was ordered to remain behind bars pending trial at least until June 30 — the fifth extension of his detention.
When Gershkovich was arrested — the first U.S. journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War — it came as a shock, even though Russia enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after its invasion of Ukraine.
"He was accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry," said Emma Tucker, the Journal's editor-in-chief. "There was nothing to suggest that this was going to happen."
Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, pose for a photo Monday in Philadelphia.
The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper. The Journal hired him in 2022.
"He absolutely loved it," Milman said of her son's life in Moscow.
He threw himself into work and became close friends with other reporters. They spent evenings, weekends and holidays together — at traditional Russian saunas, cycling around Moscow or having barbecues in the countryside.
Those friends are now among the most vocal advocates for his release.
"For us, it's got to the level where if we can see Evan smiling in the courtroom — that stuff that brings us a lot of happiness," Washington Post correspondent Francesca Ebel said. "It's reassuring that he's still not been broken by it."
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich smiles April 18 from inside a defendants’ cage during a hearing in Moscow, Russia.
His supporters say that is remarkable, given that Gershkovich is being held in Lefortovo, a notorious czarist-era prison used during Josef Stalin's purges, when executions were carried out in its basement.
Gershkovich is not allowed phone calls and wakes up "every morning to the same gray prison wall. … To think that he's been doing that every day for the past year is just horrible," said his friend, Polina Ivanova of the Financial Times.
He's allowed out of his cell for an hour a day to exercise. He spends the rest of his time largely reading books and writing letters to friends and relatives who try to make sure he stays up to date with current affairs.
That includes following his favorite English soccer team, Arsenal, which is having one of its best seasons, though scores usually get to him about two weeks late. Gershkovich can see only limited highlights on Russian TV but is kept up to date by his friend Pjotr Sauer of the British newspaper The Guardian.
Mikhail Gershkovich writes to his son about chess because his cellmate doesn't like the game. They also discuss artificial intelligence, as "he wants to be current when he comes back," his father said.
No one knows when that might be.
U.S. President Joe Biden appears April 29, 2023, in front of an image of jailed journalist Evan Gershkovich during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington.
The Biden administration seeks the release of Gershkovich, who faces 20 years in prison. Russia's Foreign Ministry said it would consider a prisoner swap — but only after a verdict in his trial, which has not yet begun.
U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who was in court again Tuesday for the latest hearing, said the charges against Gershkovich "are fiction" and Russia is "using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends."
Since invading Ukraine, Russian authorities detained several U.S. nationals and other Westerners.
President Vladimir Putin said he believed a deal can be reached to free Gershkovich, hinting he'd be open to swapping him for a Russian national in Germany who fits the description of Vadim Krasikov. He is serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.
Russia rejected a U.S. swap offer last year, and the Biden administration has not made public any possible deals since then.
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Soviet-era statues are discarded outside a glass workshop in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. The second year of Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion brought no respite for Ukrainian soldiers or civilians. Associated Press photographers documented the past 12 months of death and destruction, agony and grief — as well as the glimpses of joy — that are staples of life during war.
A Ukrainian serviceman who recently returned from the trenches of Bakhmut smokes a cigarette in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 8, 2023.
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The mother of a Ukrainian army officer cries during her son's funeral in Krasnyk village, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 29, 2023.
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Children sing traditional songs during a Christmas celebration in Kryvorivnia village, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023.
Military medics give first aid to wounded Ukrainian soldiers near Bakhmut, Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024.
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