Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he stated that it is unacceptable for the White House to attempt to view the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich as a political move by part of Moscow.
The correspondent is charged with espionage and has been preemptively put behind bars for nearly two months. Lavrov called Blinken’s attention to the need to respect the decisions of the Russian authorities, made in accordance with the law of his country. The Kremlin’s head of diplomacy stressed that it is unacceptable for US officials to create a stir with the intention “to give this case a political nuance.”
During this meeting, Lavrov pointed out that Gershkovich was caught “red-handed while trying to obtain secret information”. According to the Russian representative, the journalist wanted to collect data that constitutes a state secret “under the guise of his journalistic work.”
According to the Russian justice decided that Evan Gershkovich should be detained in a pretrial detention center. In addition, the Russian authorities detailed that Gershkovich was trying to obtain secret information related to the activities of one of the companies of the Russian military-industrial complex, without giving details of which corporation it was.
Almost immediately, Blinken stressed that his cabinet’s top priority is the safety of Americans abroad. In this sense, he condemned the repeated attempts by the Kremlin to intimidate, repress and punish journalists and civil society voices.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden asked the government of Vladimir Putin that the correspondent be released. The head of state during a brief statement to the media from the White House. Biden affirmed that there will be no diplomatic retaliation for Gershkovich’s arrest.
With information from EFE
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