President Biden said Friday, on the one-year anniversary of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich\u2019s detention in Russia, that the U.S. government is working every day to secure his release and is \u2018not giving up.\u2019<\/p>\n
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on espionage charges for allegedly collecting secret military information while he was on a work trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. The Federal Security Service said he was acting on U.S. orders to obtain state secrets, but no evidence was provided to support the accusation.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government, The Wall Street Journal and Gershkovich all reject accusations that he was working for the U.S. government to collect Russian secrets, with U.S. officials saying he was wrongfully detained.<\/p>\n
\u2018Journalism is not a crime, and Evan went to Russia to do his job as a reporter \u2014risking his safety to shine the light of truth on Russia\u2019s brutal aggression against Ukraine,\u2019 Biden said in a statement Friday. \u2018Shortly after his wholly unjust and illegal detention, he drafted a letter to his family from prison, writing: \u2018I am not losing hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018As I have told Evan\u2019s parents, I will never give up hope either,\u2019 he continued. \u2018We will continue working every day to secure his release. We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia\u2019s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips. And we will continue to stand strong against all those who seek to attack the press or target journalists \u2014 the pillars of free society.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Wall Street Journal on Friday left a blank space on the front page of its newspaper with Gershkovich\u2019s image in the space where the image of an article\u2019s author would be and a headline that read: \u2018His Story Should be Here.\u2019<\/p>\n
A recent court hearing offered little new information in Gershkovich\u2019s case. He was ordered to remain behind bars pending trial until at least June 30, the fifth extension of his detention.<\/p>\n
\u2018I admire the hell out of him,\u2019 Biden told reporters Friday when asked about Gershkovich\u2019s case before traveling from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to the Camp David presidential retreat. \u2018We\u2019re not giving up.\u2019<\/p>\n
Biden said in his statement that the U.S. government was working to free all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad, including Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a corporate executive from Michigan who is also locked up in Russia on espionage charges.<\/p>\n
Whelan was arrested in 2018 in Russia and, two years later, was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, who said he traveled to Moscow to attend a friend\u2019s wedding, has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Gershkovich and Whelan have \u2018remained resilient despite the circumstances of living in Russian detention.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018People are not bargaining chips,\u2019 Blinken said in a statement. \u2018Russia should end its practice of arbitrarily detaining individuals for political leverage and should immediately release Evan and Paul.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
President Biden said Friday, on the one-year anniversary of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich\u2019s detention in Russia, that the U.S. government is working every day to secure his release and is \u2018not giving up.\u2019 Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on espionage charges for allegedly collecting secret military information while he was on a work trip <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}