The special services of the Russian Federation followed Hershkovich until his arrest

According to the correspondent of the American edition of The Wall Street Journal Evan Hershkovich was followed by Russian security forces before his arrest in Russia on charges of espionage. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal in an article dedicated to the arrest of its journalist.

The publication also reports that after the arrest of Hershkovich, the head of the Moscow bureau, “a veteran correspondent who worked in the country since the last years of the Cold War,” was recalled from Russia. According to the WSJ, journalists from a number of other Western publications are also leaving Russia. “Many Western news agencies that sent reporters to Moscow under Stalin concluded that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is too dangerous for journalism,” the article says.

The publication briefly tells about the journalistic career of Hershkovich, the son of Jewish emigrants from the USSR, about his interest in Russian culture and life in Moscow. He became a WSJ correspondent in early 2022, shortly before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the WSJ writes, during one of his journalistic assignments after the start of the war, Hershkovich was followed by several employees of the Russian security forces. They recorded the journalist’s movements on camera and put pressure on Hershkovich’s interlocutors to stop communicating with him. The same thing happened during his second trip, to Pskov. The journalist assumed that his phone was being tapped.

• It became known about the detention of Evan Hershkovich in Yekaterinburg on the morning of March 30. On the same day, a court in Moscow sent the journalist to a pre-trial detention center on charges of espionage. This is the first such case with an American journalist in Russia since 1986 (then it was still about the USSR). The Russian investigation claims that the journalist collected secret information about one of the enterprises of the military-industrial complex at the behest of the United States. The details of the accusation are not provided. Hershkovich himself could not comment after the arrest, the WSJ and the US authorities categorically deny the accusations, declaring the journalist’s innocence.
• The representative of the US National Security Council, John Kirby, called on all US citizens, including journalists, to leave Russia for security reasons.
• US President Joe Biden, as well as leading American media, demanded the release of Evan Hershkovich.