MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. The possibility of swapping The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in Yekaterinburg on espionage charges, is out of the question for the moment, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters on Thursday.
"I wouldn't even consider this issue now, because people who were previously swapped had already served their sentences, including US citizens, who had quite serious offenses," he said.
Ryabkov recalled in this regard that Russian compatriots serving sentences in the US found themselves in the "millstones of the American system of persecution" on the principle of what passport this or that person had. "We'll see how this story develops further," the senior diplomat pointed out.
American reporter’s detention
Earlier on Thursday, the FSB Public Relations Center told TASS that FSB officers had detained Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen born in 1991, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry and working as a correspondent for the Moscow office of The Wall Street Journal, on suspicion of espionage. According to the FSB, it was "established that Gershkovich, acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel on Thursday that "the employee of the American publication The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism". "Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the status of a ‘foreign correspondent’, a journalist visa, and accreditation have been used by foreign nationals in our country to cover up activities that are not journalism. This is not the first famous Western individual who has been caught red-handed," the diplomat said.
"The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich," a statement published on Thursday on the newspaper’s website reads.