Family of detained US journalist in Russia breaks silence
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Wall Street Journals' Evan Gershkovich has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison and has yet to be granted consular access.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - The parents of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich
“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, you know, be optimistic, believe in a happy ending,” Mr Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman told the Wall Street Journal, speaking out for the first time since his arrest.
“But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved, but that’s what I choose to believe,” she added.
Ms Milman and her husband Mikhail Gershkovich fled the Soviet Union separately in 1979 and settled in New Jersey, raising their two children, including her daughter Danielle.
The spying charges against her son, who had previously worked for the Moscow bureau of AFP, are the first of their kind in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, prompting an outcry from media outlets, rights groups and foreign governments.
In the video interview, Ms Milman said that her son, 31, felt a responsibility to stay in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine,
“I know that he felt like it was his duty to report... He loves Russian people. He still does,” she said.
Ms Milman said that she thought some of her son’s recent reporting on the inner deliberations inside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin caught the attention of authorities.
“The article that came out about Putin in December got me worried a lot,” she added.
Russian officials insist that her son was “caught red-handed” when he was detained in Yekaterinburg in late March,
He has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison where he has yet to be granted consular access, with Moscow saying the question is still under review.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday called Russia’s imprisonment of Mr Gershkovich on spying charges “totally illegal” and told his family he was working for a release. AFP
