Locked Up In Russia

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Micah Loewinger (0:30)

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That's onthemedia.org/donate. Thank you so much for your support and onto the show. Hey, you're listening to the On the Media midweek podcast, I'm Micah Loewinger. There was an interview we were talking about booking for the show this week, but then we discovered that our colleagues at the New Yorker Radio Hour had gotten there first. Rather than double up on their work, we decided we'd just bring you their interview. Here's New Yorker Radio Hour host, David Remnick.

David Remnick (2:56)

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 correspondents. 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 (4:13)

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 spy next year. He said it in more official language, like you need to do a better job of catching traitors.

David Remnick (4:46)

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

Evan Gershkovich (4:50)

So I think that it's partly he's telling them, we need to 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 and America 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 FSBSS and comes over from Germany.