A “Wall Street Journal” journalist was detained in Russia. FSB declares “espionage”

The journalist of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal Evan Hershkovich was detained in the city of Yekaterinburg (Russia).

The FSB reported this on March 30.

The FSB claims that Hershkovich "under the instructions of the US was engaged in gathering information about one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex, which is a state secret."

"The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, the US citizen Evan Hershkovich, born in 1991, who is suspected of espionage for the American government, accredited to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have been terminated," the FSB release said.

Before that, the journalist was in Yekaterinburg for several weeks. Hershkovich traveled to write about the attitude of Russians to the war and about the recruitment of local residents to the PMC "Wagner". He was accompanied on the trip by local activist Yaroslav Shirshikov.

On March 29, the Yekaterinburg publication Vechernye Vedomosti reported that in the city center near the Bukowski Grill restaurant, where the activist Shirshikov and Hershkovich used to meet, people in civilian clothes detained a man by pulling a sweater over his head. Shirshikov suggested that it could be an American journalist.