Rus­sia’s se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice ar­rest­ed an Amer­i­can re­porter for The Wall Street Jour­nal on es­pi­onage charges, the first time a U.S. cor­re­spon­dent has been de­tained on spy­ing ac­cu­sa­tions since the Cold War. The news­pa­per de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and de­mand­ed his re­lease.

Evan Ger­shkovich was de­tained in the city of Yeka­ter­in­burg while al­leged­ly try­ing to ob­tain clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion, the Fed­er­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice, known by the acronym FSB, said Thurs­day.

The ser­vice, which is the top do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty agency and main suc­ces­sor to the So­vi­et-era KGB, al­leged that Ger­shkovich “was act­ing on in­struc­tions from the Amer­i­can side to col­lect in­for­ma­tion about the ac­tiv­i­ties of one of the en­ter­pris­es of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary-in­dus­tri­al com­plex that con­sti­tutes a state se­cret.”

The Jour­nal “ve­he­ment­ly de­nies the al­le­ga­tions from the FSB and seeks the im­me­di­ate re­lease of our trust­ed and ded­i­cat­ed re­porter, Evan Ger­shkovich,” the news­pa­per said. “We stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Evan and his fam­i­ly.”

The ar­rest comes at a mo­ment of bit­ter ten­sions be­tween the West and Moscow over its war in Ukraine and as the Krem­lin in­ten­si­fies a crack­down on op­po­si­tion ac­tivists, in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and civ­il so­ci­ety groups.

The sweep­ing cam­paign of re­pres­sion is un­prece­dent­ed since the So­vi­et era. Ac­tivists say it of­ten means the very pro­fes­sion of jour­nal­ism is crim­i­nal­ized, along with the ac­tiv­i­ties of or­di­nary Rus­sians who op­pose the war.

Ear­li­er this week, a Russ­ian court con­vict­ed a fa­ther over so­cial me­dia posts crit­i­cal of the war and sen­tenced him to two years in prison. His 13-year-old daugh­ter was sent to an or­phan­age.

Ger­shkovich is the first Amer­i­can re­porter to be ar­rest­ed on es­pi­onage charges in Rus­sia since Sep­tem­ber 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow cor­re­spon­dent for U.S. News and World Re­port, was ar­rest­ed by the KGB. Daniloff was re­leased with­out charge 20 days lat­er in a swap for an em­ploy­ee of the So­vi­et Union’s Unit­ed Na­tions mis­sion who was ar­rest­ed by the FBI, al­so on spy­ing charges.

At a hear­ing Thurs­day, a Moscow court quick­ly ruled that Ger­shkovich would be kept be­hind bars pend­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

While pre­vi­ous Amer­i­can de­tainees have been freed in pris­on­er swaps, a top Russ­ian of­fi­cial said it was too ear­ly to talk about any such deal.

In Wash­ing­ton, the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion said it had spo­ken with the Jour­nal and Ger­shkovich’s fam­i­ly. White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre con­demned the ar­rest “in the strongest terms” and urged Amer­i­cans to heed gov­ern­ment warn­ings not to trav­el to Rus­sia.

The State De­part­ment was in di­rect touch with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and seek­ing ac­cess to Ger­shkovich, Jean-Pierre said.

Ger­shkovich, who cov­ers Rus­sia, Ukraine and oth­er ex-So­vi­et na­tions as a cor­re­spon­dent in the Jour­nal’s Moscow bu­reau, could face up to 20 years in prison if con­vict­ed of es­pi­onage. Promi­nent lawyers not­ed that past in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to es­pi­onage cas­es took a year to 18 months, dur­ing which time he may have lit­tle con­tact with the out­side world.

The FSB not­ed that Ger­shkovich had ac­cred­i­ta­tion from the Russ­ian For­eign Min­istry to work as a jour­nal­ist, but min­istry spokes­woman Maria Za­kharo­va al­leged that Ger­shkovich was us­ing his cre­den­tials as cov­er for “ac­tiv­i­ties that have noth­ing to do with jour­nal­ism.”

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov told re­porters: “It is not about a sus­pi­cion; it is about the fact that he was caught red-hand­ed.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is escorted by officers from the Lefortovsky court to a bus, in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 30, 2023. Russia's top security agency says an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal has been arrested on espionage charges. The Federal Security Service said Thursday that Evan Gershkovich was detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg while allegedly trying to obtain classified information. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Ger­shkovich speaks flu­ent Russ­ian and had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse and The New York Times. He was a 2014 grad­u­ate of Bow­doin Col­lege in Maine, where he was a phi­los­o­phy ma­jor who co­op­er­at­ed with lo­cal pa­pers and cham­pi­oned a free press, ac­cord­ing to Clay­ton Rose, the col­lege’s pres­i­dent.

His last re­port from Moscow, pub­lished ear­li­er this week, fo­cused on the Russ­ian econ­o­my’s slow­down amid West­ern sanc­tions im­posed af­ter Russ­ian troops in­vad­ed Ukraine last year.

Ivan Pavlov, a promi­nent Russ­ian de­fense at­tor­ney who has worked on many es­pi­onage and trea­son cas­es, said Ger­shkovich’s case is the first crim­i­nal es­pi­onage charge against a for­eign jour­nal­ist in post-So­vi­et Rus­sia.

“That un­writ­ten rule not to touch ac­cred­it­ed for­eign jour­nal­ists, has stopped work­ing,” said Pavlov, a mem­ber of the First De­part­ment le­gal aid group.

Pavlov said the case against Ger­shkovich was built to give Rus­sia “trump cards” for a fu­ture pris­on­er ex­change and will like­ly be re­solved “not by the means of the law, but by po­lit­i­cal, diplo­mat­ic means.”

Russ­ian Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Ryabkov ruled out any quick swap.

“I wouldn’t even con­sid­er this is­sue now be­cause peo­ple who were pre­vi­ous­ly swapped had al­ready served their sen­tences,” Ryabkov said, ac­cord­ing to Russ­ian news agen­cies.

In De­cem­ber, WN­BA star Brit­tney Griner was freed af­ter 10 months be­hind bars in ex­change for Russ­ian arms deal­er Vik­tor Bout.

An­oth­er Amer­i­can, Paul Whe­lan, a Michi­gan cor­po­rate se­cu­ri­ty ex­ec­u­tive, has been im­pris­oned in Rus­sia since De­cem­ber 2018 on es­pi­onage charges that his fam­i­ly and the U.S. gov­ern­ment have said are base­less.

“Our fam­i­ly is sor­ry to hear that an­oth­er Amer­i­can fam­i­ly will have to ex­pe­ri­ence the same trau­ma that we have had to en­dure for the past 1,553 days,” Whe­lan’s broth­er David said in an emailed state­ment. “It sounds as though the frame-up of Mr. Ger­shkovich was the same as it was in Paul’s case.”

Jeanne Cave­li­er, of the press free­dom group Re­porters With­out Bor­ders, said Ger­shkovich’s ar­rest “looks like a re­tal­i­a­tion mea­sure of Rus­sia against the Unit­ed States.”

“We are very alarmed be­cause it is prob­a­bly a way to in­tim­i­date all West­ern jour­nal­ists that are try­ing to in­ves­ti­gate as­pects of the war on the ground in Rus­sia,” said Cave­li­er, head of East­ern Eu­rope and Cen­tral Asia desk at the Paris-based group.

Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Dmit­ry Kolezev said on Telegram that he spoke to Ger­shkovich be­fore his trip to the Ur­al Moun­tain city of Yeka­ter­in­burg, Rus­sia’s fourth-largest, about 1,670 kilo­me­ters (about 1,035 miles) east of Moscow.

“He was prepar­ing for the usu­al, al­beit rather dan­ger­ous in cur­rent con­di­tions, jour­nal­ist work,” Kolezev wrote.

An­oth­er promi­nent lawyer with the First De­part­ment group, Yevge­ny Smirnov, said that those ar­rest­ed on es­pi­onage and trea­son charges are usu­al­ly held at the FSB’s Lefor­to­vo prison, where they are usu­al­ly placed in to­tal iso­la­tion, with­out phone calls, vis­i­tors or even ac­cess to news­pa­pers. At most, they can re­ceive let­ters, of­ten de­layed by weeks. Smirnov called these con­di­tions “tools of sup­pres­sion.”

Smirnov and Pavlov both said that any tri­al would be held be­hind closed doors. Ac­cord­ing to Pavlov, there have been no ac­quit­tals in trea­son and es­pi­onage cas­es in Rus­sia since 1999.

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Sto­ry by THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS