Forget Russia’s spy fiction, here’s why US reporter Evan Gershkovich was likely arrested
Tom Rogan
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Underlining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing sense that he can and should escalate against U.S. interests, Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, has arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The journalist was detained in Yekaterinburg, 870 miles east of Moscow.
The Kremlin claimed that Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the [U.S. intelligence community], collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
Welcome to the Kremlin’s dream world.
Gershkovich was born to Russian parents, but he is an American journalist, not a CIA spy. What was he doing in Yekaterinburg? The BBC’s excellent Russia service reports that he may have tried to visit the nearby Uralvagonzavod tank factory. If so, that visit is probably the hook that the FSB needed to concoct a (very, very thin) espionage pretense for its unjustifiable arrest. Gershkovich may also have been in Yekaterinburg to report on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group. A recruitment center for the mercenary organization was opened in the city earlier this month, with an advertisement noting that candidates would have to pass fitness tests.
Other possible motives for this reporting trip could include the public spat between Prigozhin and the local region’s governor. Responding to Prigozhin’s accusation that regional authorities had not afforded honorable burial rites to Wagner personnel, the governor referenced Prigozhin’s catering service past, suggesting that he focus on cookery instead. Tensions between Prigozhin and the Kremlin have also been growing as Wagner suffers heavy casualties in Ukraine.
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There are prospective motivations for this arrest, but none of them have anything to do with actual spying. The notion that Gershkovich is a spy does not stand up to scrutiny. His background and activities simply do not fit with those of a CIA nonofficial cover operations officer. Gershkovich was very likely arrested because he was simply too good at his job. The Kremlin knows that the Wall Street Journal is regarded in the United States as the preeminent publication of the U.S. conservative elite, affecting the views and votes of members of Congress, for example. It does not want investigative reporting that underlines how dysfunctional Russia’s war effort has truly become. It does not want that reporting because it wants the U.S. to pare back its aid for Ukraine.
This arrest also likely evinces Putin’s sense that he can escalate against U.S. interests in a way that earns U.S. concessions rather than new costs. He may well have been encouraged by the Biden administration’s decision to order a retreat of U.S. drone flights in response to Russia’s downing of one such flight. But Putin clearly also sought a valuable replacement for Brittney Griner in terms of future prisoner exchanges.
Unfortunately, even as Putin’s forces are being shredded in Ukraine, the U.S. has allowed him to believe he holds the strategic initiative.