Journalists are increasingly under threat in Russia. Maria Ponomarenko, for example, reported on her social media channels about the Russian army’s attack on the theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Last month she was sentenced to six years in a penal colony for “knowingly spreading false information”.
It was even worse for her colleague Ivan Safronov, who was sentenced to 22 years in a camp in September – twenty-two years! Even murderers can expect lesser sentences in Russia. Ponomarenko and Safronov are two of at least 18 journalists held in the dungeons of the Putin regime.
Most independent journalists – and there are no dependent ones – fled into exile after the Russian invasion of Ukraine; since then there have also been no more newspapers or broadcasters for which they could work.
Compared to their Russian counterparts, foreign correspondents lived relatively safely in Russia, although many left the country as a precaution after the start of the war. Although they were repeatedly hindered in their work, they did not risk more than expulsion. So far anyway.
But now Evan Gershkovich, a US citizen of Russian descent and correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, has been arrested in Yekaterinburg by the domestic intelligence service FSB on charges of espionage. A court ordered pre-trial detention, he faces 20 years in prison. Gershkovich is said to have researched the Wagner mercenary group.
So far he has not been allowed to speak to his lawyer, but the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry claims that Gershkovich was “caught in the act”. It is a “general pattern” that “Western correspondents spy against Russia under the guise of journalism.”
The actual pattern is different: a regime that has made the transition from authoritarianism to dictatorship, after imprisoning, expelling, or otherwise silencing domestic critics, takes on foreign reporters. If you arrest one, you intimidate everyone. The trick is simple. But he works. Unfortunately.
