US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that there was “no doubt” that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was wrongfully detained by Russian authorities.
He also told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the White House was “gravely concerned” about Gershkovich’s arrest.
The journalist, who has been described in media reports as a Jewish 30-something reporter who works for the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau, had been covering the impact of the Ukraine war.
He was detained by Russian authorities last week on accusations of being a spy.
“In my own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia, which is exactly what I said to Foreign Minister Lavrov,” Blinken told reporters at a Brussels news conference, according to NBC News.
“There is no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens around the world, and that includes those who may be wrongfully detained, held hostage, otherwise kept from coming home, being with our families,”added Blinken who was in the Belgian capital for a NATO foreign ministers meeting.
Gershkovich was able to meet this week with lawyers after being in detention for a week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The White House has decided to declare Gershkovich as officially “wrongfully detained” allowing federal agencies to coordinate ways to secure his release, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
“This is a case that is a priority for this president,” Jean-Pierre said.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) reported late last week that Gershkovich had been arrested on charges of collecting "classified information" from a military complex in the city of Ekaterinburg. The agency did not elaborate on when the arrest actually took place.
The FSB is alleging that Gershkovich "was acting on US orders to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex that constitutes a state secret."
Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on Russian soil since the Cold War. He could face up to 20 years in a state prison as tensions with the US over the war in Ukraine are boiling over.
In his last article, which was published last week, Gershkovich, who has been covering the war in Ukraine, discussed the effects of Western sanctions on Moscow.
Jean-Pierre told reporters that the State Department has been working to provide consular services to Gershkovich since they learned he had been detained.
“Evan is not a spy. Evan has never worked for the US government. And he is an independent journalist employed by The Wall Street Journal,” she said.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Passover in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)
