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WSJ reporter’s activity in Yekaterinburg not journalism-related — Russian diplomat

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

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

© Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. The activities of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained in Yekaterinburg, were not journalism-related, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Thursday.

"What the employee of the American publication The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism," the diplomat stressed. "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," she blogged.

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."

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