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US hasn’t reached out to Russia yet about arrested reporter — Russian MFA

Evan Gershkovich was earlier detained in Yekaterinburg as part of an espionage case and then arrested in Moscow

MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. The US hasn’t yet officially reached out to Russia about Wall Street Journal reporter and US national Evan Gershkovich, who was earlier detained in Yekaterinburg as part of an espionage case and then arrested in Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov said on Thursday.

"No, they haven’t reached out yet," he said to a question from TASS.

Gershkovich was earlier detained in Yekaterinburg as part of an espionage case and then arrested in Moscow. The Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, told TASS that Gershkovich, "acting at the behest of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of an enterprise within Russia’s military-industrial complex." The reporter was detained in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. The FSB investigators opened a criminal case against the US national under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Espionage"). Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the journalist was caught red-handed.

The WSJ said in a statement that it was deeply concerned about the safety of Gershkovich, who works at the newspaper’s Moscow bureau covering Russian events.