SOCHI, June 22. /TASS/. A request by the US to gain consular access to Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained by Russian authorities on espionage charges, was received and Russia is reviewing it, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

"The request has been received and is being reviewed. There is no decision yet. But I think that this is not a subject for the media at all, this is a purely routine issue. We are interacting with the US Embassy on this topic. They will receive all our notifications," he told reporters on Thursday replying to a question by TASS.

According to the Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), 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 that Gershkovich be held in custody until May 29. On May 23, the court extended his detention by three months.