Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich made international headlines when he was detained in Russia under accusations of spying in March 2023.
The veteran journalist was the first US reporter to be arrested for alleged spying since the Cold War.
He appeared in court in Russia more than a dozen times before he was convicted of espionage in July 2024 and sentenced to 16 years behind bars – a verdict that leaders in the West denounced as the result of a sham trial.
He was finally released on Aug. 1, as part of a historic prisoner swap between the West and Russia.
Suburban childhood
Evan Gershkovich was born in Princeton, NJ, in 1991. Both of his parents were Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union: His father, Mikhail, hailed from Odessa in present-day Ukraine, and his mother, Ella, came from St. Petersburg, according to the Journal.
Gershkovich and his older sister, Danielle, grew up in Princeton speaking Russian at home – though he only became more fluent in the language when he eventually moved to Moscow, according to colleague Joshua Yaffa.
In 2010, he graduated from Princeton High School, where he was remembered for captaining the state championship-winning mens’ soccer team.
“I knew Evan Gershkovich well,” Wayne Sutcliffe told TAP into Princeton in the wake of Gershkovich’s arrest.”
“He was captain of the 2009 soccer team, which won the New Jersey State Championship. I have been fielding text messages all morning from our Princeton High School soccer alumni, all of whom are trying to find a way we can help to support Evan’s family,” the concerned alum said.
College years
After high school, Gershkovich decamped to Maine, where he studied philosophy and English and Bowdoin College.
He began his earliest forays into journalism by writing for the Bowdoin Orient and the Bowdoin Review, as well as DJing for the campus radio station, WBOR, according to a note from the college president.
Early career
In an interview with the Bowdoin communications office from 2020, Gershkovitch explained that it “a while to find out that journalism was the career for [him].”
After graduating from the college in 2014, he spent a year working in communications for an environmental rights NGO in southwest Asia, where he also freelanced for a handful of English-language outlets, he recalled.
Gershkovich was inspired to give journalism “a real try,” and moved back to New York, where he worked as a cook for a catering company and at a restaurant before landing a temporary gig as an overnight clerk on the New York Times’ foreign desk.
He spent two years as an assistant at the Gray Lady until, in the summer 2017, he accepted a reporting job at the Moscow Times, an English-speaking news website based out of the Russian capital.
Move to Russia
Gershkovich relocated to Moscow in 2017, and wrote for the Moscow Times and then Agence France-Presse until January 2022, when he moved to the Wall Street Journal.
“The lion’s share of my job entails reporting news features, meaning I have to follow trends and read between the headlines to tell in-depth, relevant stories designed to help a foreign audience understand Russia,” he told Bowdoin in 2020, while in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In February 2022 – just after Russia invaded Ukraine – he was the only US reporter who witnessed the first wounded Russian troops being brought home at the Belarusian border, the Journal said.
At the time of his arrest, Gershkovich had been living in Moscow for six years.
“He fell in love with Russia,” the Journal reported in the early days of his detainment.
“Its language, the people he chatted with for hours in regional capitals, the punk bands he hung out with at Moscow dive bars.
“Now, espionage charges leave him facing a possible prison sentence of up to 20 years.”
Shocking arrest
Gershkovich, then 31, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) on March 29, 2023, while he was reporting on the Wagner mercenary group on an assignment in Yekaterinburg.
The FSB accused him of collecting information for the CIA – the first allegation of spying leveled against a US reporter since the Cold War. A Kremlin spokesperson claimed he had been caught “red-handed,” but did not provide any other information.
Two weeks later, the US State Department officially declared that Gershkovich was “wrongfully detained,” and demanded his release.
Gershkovich, the US government, and his employer all repeatedly denied the allegations of espionage.
Gershkovich was imprisoned at the notorious Lefortovo jail in Moscow, where US envoys struggled to gain access to him or determine his well-being.
A judge denied Gershkovich’s appeal of his arrest and rejected Dow Jones’ offer of a $600,000 bond.
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” Gershkovich wrote in a letter to his family dated April 5.
“I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.”
Nearly 500 days behind bars
Gershkovich appeared in court in Moscow for the first time on April 18, 2023.
In May 2023, sources with the US State Department revealed that officials were hoping to free the reporter through a prisoner exchange deal that would hopefully also release detained former US Marine Paul Whelan.
Gershkovich’s pretrial detention was repeatedly extended until the proceedings finally got under way on June 26, 2024.
On July 19, he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison following a closed-doors trial that was denounced outside of Russia as a sham.
“Evan’s wrongful detention has been an outrage since his unjust arrest 477 days ago, and it must end now,” Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
“Even as Russia orchestrates its shameful sham trial, we continue to do everything we can to push for Evan’s immediate release and to state unequivocally: Evan was doing his job as a journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now.”
Historic release
Gershkovich was one of over 20 prisoners released as part of a historic prisoner exchange between Russia and the West on Aug. 1 2024.
The deal – the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War – also saw the release of Whelan, 54, as well as Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was detained in October 2023.
Gershkovich’s family learned of his release from President Joe Biden at the White House the morning of the announcement, officials said.
“Now their brutal ordeal is over and they’re free,” Biden said after the group was flown to Ankara, Turkey.
“Moments ago, their families and I were able to speak to them on the telephone from the Oval Office.”
Biden planned to personally greet Gershkovich, Whelan and the other released prisoners at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland later in the day, he said.