NEW YORK, March 30. /TASS/. The US State Department since March 29 has been following the situation around Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested as part of an espionage case, CNN reported on Thursday, citing sources.
The US State Department and the White House haven’t yet issued any comment on the reporter’s detention and subsequent arrest.
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.
Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court on Thursday ruled to take Gershkovich into custody until May 29. The reporter will be held in the Lefortovo pretrial detention prison.
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.