Russia Takes a Journalist Hostage The Kremlin arrests a WSJ reporter on phony espionage charges.
Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich escalates the Kremlin’s habit of taking Americans hostage, and it’s more evidence that Russia is divorcing itself from the community of civilized nations. President Vladimir Putin is now responsible for Mr. Gershkovich’s health and safety, and the Biden Administration has an obligation to press for his release.
Agents of Russia’s notorious Federal Security Bureau snatched Mr. Gershkovich on Wednesday in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 800 miles east of Moscow, where he was on a reporting trip. As of late Thursday, neither the Journal nor the U.S. government had been allowed to contact Mr. Gershkovich.
The FSB is the successor to the Cold War-era KGB, where Mr. Putin learned his brutal methods. An FSB statement on Thursday said the reporter, who is accredited to work in Russia by the country’s foreign ministry, is being charged with espionage.
The Journal denies the allegation, which is dubious on its face. The government closely monitors foreign reporters in Russia, and Mr. Gershkovich has worked there for years. The FSB could have expelled him long ago if it really believed he is a spy.
The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the U.S. and intimidate the foreign press still working in Russia. The Kremlin has cowed domestic reporting in Russia, so foreign correspondents are the last independent sources of news. Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest comes days after his byline was on a revealing and widely read dispatch documenting the decline of the Russian economy. The Kremlin doesn’t want that truth told.
The arrest could also be a response to charges brought last week by the U.S. Justice Department against Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov. The Russian national was charged with various fraud offenses and being an agent of a foreign power. Mr. Putin often takes hostages with a goal of exchanging them later for Russians who’ve committed crimes in the U.S.
The arrest of Mr. Gershkovich on an espionage allegation is the first against a U.S. journalist in Russia since the 1986 detention of Nicholas Daniloff. That was in the latter stages of the Cold War. Mr. Daniloff was held for roughly two weeks and released without charges, while the U.S. allowed a Russian employee at the Soviet mission to the United Nations to leave after he had been arrested days earlier in an FBI sting operation.
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The brazen arrest of an American journalist shows the declining ability of the U.S. to deter assaults on its citizens. The Biden Administration on Thursday condemned the detention of Mr. Gershkovich, and we at the Journal are grateful for that. But it’s fair to ask why Mr. Putin believes he can snatch Americans and come out ahead.
Last year Russia and the U.S. traded basketball player Brittney Griner, whom Russia had arrested on minor drug charges, for Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in Illinois for conspiring to kill Americans and selling weapons to a terror group.
The prisoner swap was widely perceived as favoring Moscow, which valued Mr. Bout highly, while Mr. Biden didn’t insist that Russia also release American Paul Whelan. Russia has held Mr. Whelan, a former Marine, on espionage charges since 2018. Recently two Russian planes took down a U.S. drone flying in international airspace above the Black Sea, and the U.S. did nothing in response.
Thuggish leaders keep doing thuggish things if they think they will pay no price. The Biden Administration will have to consider diplomatic and political escalation. Expelling Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., as well as all Russian journalists working here, would be the minimum to expect. The U.S. government’s first duty is to protect its citizens, and too many governments now believe they can arrest and imprison Americans with impunity.
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