An American Journalist Imprisoned as a Spy in Russia

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The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.

David Remnick (1:17)

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In 2023, a young reporter for The Wall Street Journal, working in Moscow, was arrested by Russian authorities and charged with espionage. His name is Evan Gershkovich.

For Putin's regime to lock up an American journalist on charges that were obviously blatantly was shocking. I'm a former Moscow correspondent myself. I'm on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists. And so I watched these threats to the press very closely, and this felt like a distinctly dangerous escalation of Putin's authoritarian tactics in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine. Evan Gershkovich spent 16 months in prison before his release in an exchange of prisoners. He details his experience in a new book, This Cursed Beautiful Land. We published an excerpt from the book at newyorker.com, and I spoke to Evan Gershkovich last week at a live event in New York City.

Why you? There aren't an infinite number of correspondence. Why you? Is it because you were out of town? Is it because you grew up in a Russian emigre household? Your language skills? What was it? Why you?

Evan Gershkovich (2:36)

So I think there's, I mean, I don't think I'll ever have the answer. And the book doesn't actually pose a complete answer. It's a bit of a question that's left open. But I think there's several reasons.

One is that Putin addressed the FSB, the Domestic Intelligence Agency, formerly the KGB, at the end of 22, near the end of the first year of the full-scale invasion, and said, you guys have to catch a spy next year. He said it in more official language, like you need to do a better job of catching traitors.

David Remnick (3:10)

Because they need to crack down on traitors or they needed fresh meat for a trade?

Evan Gershkovich (3:14)

So, I think that they, you know, it's partly he's telling them, we need to, you know, shore up the war effort. So it's partly paranoia, but it's also fresh meat for a trade, because at that point there was Paul Whelan in Russia, an American on espionage charges, and the Americans were trying to bring him home, and the Russians were telling them, well, he's not going home until Vadim Krasikov in FBSS and comes home from Germany. He had murdered a guy in broad daylight there, sent from Russia on a mission, and the Americans were saying, well, this is crazy, we can't get the Germans to do this. So then I think the kind of hostage diplomacy game had already been playing out for a few years. They had traded Trevor Reed, a Marine, Brittany Griner, a basketball player, and I think they were looking at how they could stack Americans, maybe do a two-for-one, like the way a trade works.

So you start looking at your environment, you have this order to catch a spy.

I think an American is the more valuable ones. But you also need a loud, a kind of somebody who's going to make a splash. And so I think you start looking at a journalist as one option. And I was up to reporting that some people might call it brave, other people might call it reckless.

David Remnick (4:34)

What do you call it?

Evan Gershkovich (4:36)

I call it a mix, I think, to be, I think it's important reporting for the work that we do, the work I was doing once.

David Remnick (4:43)

No, but I mean the specific thing. You were pursuing Russian military readiness and your attempt, I think, was to get material that would tell you more about the war effort, which is utterly verboten. And you met a source in Yekaterinburg, and he turned out to be part of a setup, obviously.