Evan Gershkovich has recounted how he was arrested in Russia, saying he immediately realized that everything had been set up as a trap and that the case against him was intended to turn him into a pawn in a broader political conflict.
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In an interview on Radio 4’s “Today” program, the American journalist said he was in Yekaterinburg in March 2023, where he thought he was going to meet a source for a story, when agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained him.
He said he was sitting in a restaurant when about six masked men came in and approached his table.
According to Gershkovich, they told him: “I think we reserved that table.”
Although the situation seemed unusual at the time, the journalist said that, looking back, he realized the intervention had been carefully planned to leave him no chance to react.
A few moments later, he was told that he had been arrested by the FSB and accused of espionage.
“At that moment, you understand that this is something extraordinarily serious. When the FSB is involved, you know everything has been planned,” he said.
Another detail that helped him understand the nature of his detention, he said, was that he was not interrogated or tortured.
Gershkovich said this led him to think that the authorities were not treating him as a genuine foreign agent, but as someone who could be used in a future deal.
“They set me up and fabricated this case so I could serve as a valuable hostage, like a chess piece in a bigger game,” the journalist said.
He said this conclusion also brought him some relief, because he believed his imprisonment would not last for decades.
Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023, while working as a correspondent for “The Wall Street Journal” in Moscow. He had lived in Russia since 2017.
In July 2024, a Russian court found him guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Gershkovich and “The Wall Street Journal” have rejected the charges, while the U.S. government has called them baseless.
After about 16 months in pretrial detention, he was released in August 2024 as part of a large prisoner exchange deal involving Russia, the United States, Germany and other countries.
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was also released in the same exchange.
Among those returned to Russia was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen who was serving a life sentence in Germany for the murder of a former Chechen commander in Berlin.
Gershkovich said that while in prison, he had thought that such an exchange might be the way he would regain his freedom.
On the day he was arrested, he was in Yekaterinburg, about 1,600 kilometers east of Moscow.
The journalist had traveled there to gather information for a story and had met with someone he considered a potential source.
He said the person he was meeting disappeared into the crowd as soon as the FSB agents intervened.
His detention sparked strong international reactions. Media organizations and political institutions in the United States and elsewhere called for the journalist’s release.
Then-U.S. President Joe Biden said bringing Gershkovich home was one of his most important priorities.
