US President Joe Biden said he is "working every day" for the release of Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist detained for a year in Russia on espionage charges. Biden pledged to "continue working every day" for his release. “We will continue to expose and impose costs for Russia's terrible attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips,” he said, also recalling the case of Paul Whelan, a US citizen and former Marine detained in Russia since 2018.
His Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, in a statement, stressed that "people are not bargaining chips. Russia should end the practice of arbitrary detention of individuals as political leverage and should immediately release Evan and Paul." “To date, Russia has provided no evidence of wrongdoing for one simple reason: Evan did nothing wrong. Journalism is not a crime,” accuses Blinken.
Gershkovich's family, for their part, have assured that they will continue the fight for his release, saying that his innocence has given them courage in this ordeal. “We never imagined such a situation could happen to our son and brother, much less spend an entire year in uncertainty,” parents Mikhail and Ella and sister Danielle wrote in a letter to Wall Street readers Journal, where the reporter works. "But despite this long battle, we remain strong", they assure.
For them it was an "unimaginable" year. "It's like we were holding our breath. We lived with a constant pain in our hearts thinking about Evan every moment of the day," they said. “Through all the challenges of this tumultuous time, we have seen Evan face this uncertainty, stuck in this small cell, with little news from the world, without the freedom of him,” they write again.
“Evan has shown remarkable willpower, strength and even humor during his unjust detention. We are amazed by his and his family's steadfastness in the face of such a harrowing ordeal. But their fortitude does not change the fact that detention by Evan is a blatant attack on the rights of the free press at a time when evidence abounds around the world of the vital role that quality journalism plays in our society's understanding of world events and bearing witness to history." the director of the newspaper, Emma Tucker, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on the first anniversary of the "unjust
detention" of her reporter in Russia.
"We at the Journal - he continues - remain committed to providing our readers with quality foreign information. But Evan is also an example of the threats we and other media outlets face in what has become an increasingly dangerous environment for journalists who put themselves on the front lines to tell you the story,” he adds, recalling the more than 520 journalists detained around the world, the dozens who died while doing their duty and “countless others harassed and intimidated while pursuing the truth.”
“The time has come for this talented reporter and innocent man to return home,” hopes Tucker, calling the espionage accusations “false and unfounded” and remaining “optimistic and confident in President Biden's promise to Evan's family to bring him home ".
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