NEW YORK, June 28. /TASS/. The US continues to seek consular access to the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is accused of espionage in Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
"We of course, from day one, have sought consular access. We've had some initial access to him. That's been denied more recently. It's something we continue to look for virtually every day," he said at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. "We are continuing to explore ways to bring him home, Paul Whelan as well, and many other Americans who are being detained in different parts of the world in an arbitrary fashion. We brought a lot of Americans over the last two and a half years but more to be done."
"We'll continue to work to bring Evan home. We're not going to stop until he gets there," he went on to say.
The Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, said 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 has ruled to take Gershkovich into custody until May 29. The court on May 23 extended his detention by three months.