“His article should be there,” soberly states the newspaper's headline. The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal published an almost entirely empty front page this Friday. A strong symbolic act which comes one year to the day after the imprisonment of its journalist Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage and imprisoned in Russia.
Here is an early look at the front page of a special section wrapping The Wall Street Journal https://t.co/MPCfB7rGK0 pic.twitter.com/iFVb4c4Q19
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 29, 2024
“One year in a Russian prison. A year of stolen items, joys and memories. Crime: journalism”, we can read at the top of this front page, which remains mostly empty, with the aim of denouncing the absence of the journalist.
Also read Who is Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist arrested in Russia?
“Evan lost 12 months of normal existence as a dynamic and curious 32-year-old, a year in which he would have had to travel across Europe and the United States between groups of friends, family and friends. reports in Russia,” laments the newspaper in an article which brings together various testimonies from those around him.
“Talented journalist”
“It is high time for this talented journalist and this innocent man to come home,” adds Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, in a letter published on their site. “This first anniversary is an opportunity to express our admiration for our colleague and his family. It is a reminder of the dangers that journalists around the world face in carrying out their essential mission,” she insists.
The day before this sad anniversary, the Kremlin reported “contacts” in progress with a view to a possible exchange of the American journalist. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who also worked for AFP in Moscow between 2020 and 2021, was arrested in March 2023 by the FSB during a report in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals. He rejects the accusations of “espionage” brought against him, punishable by 20 years in prison, as do the United States, his newspaper and his relatives. Russia has never publicly provided any evidence and the entire procedure has been classified.
Washington accuses Moscow of having taken him hostage to exchange him for Russians detained in Western countries, like several American citizens arrested in recent years in Russia. President Vladimir Putin said he was willing to exchange the journalist for Vadim Krassikov, imprisoned for life in Germany for the murder of a Chechen opponent in Berlin in 2019.