MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. Washington making a clamor about the situation around Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested for espionage, won’t help the US get what it wants, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Wednesday.
"We are seeing a trend of making noise at the instigation of the US authorities or some other structures who may be behind this, about this situation (with Gershkovich - TASS). Apparently, they think that if they, as they say, make a fuss, howl, whistle, this will help them somehow. But perhaps they have forgotten the experiences of the previous period, when that never helped the situation," the diplomat said, commenting on the situation around the US reporter’s arrest.
Zakharova also pointed out that the question of negotiating an exchange for the American journalist should be handled by "the appropriate channels and authorized structures, and nobody else and in no other way."
According to the Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Evan 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. FSB investigators opened a criminal case against the US citizen under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Espionage"). Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the journalist had been "caught red-handed." On March 30, Moscow’s Lefortovo district court ordered to arrest Gershkovich until May 29.