This Thursday the Russian government rejected the United States request for a new consular visit for The Wall Street Journal journalist, Evan Gershkovich, accused of alleged espionage work. This would be Moscow’s response to Washington after they did not issue a visa to a group of Russian journalists who were going to cover a session of the United Nations Security Council, chaired by the Russian delegation in New York.
At that time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Russian media that the United States defines itself as the strongest, the most intelligent, the freest, the fairest, but that “it chickened out and showed the true value of his statements on freedom of speech, access to information and everything else”. “The most important thing, you can be sure, is that we will not forget and we will not forgive this,” he told reporters who were not granted the permits by Washington.
Now this Thursday, Moscow delivered a protest note to a member of US diplomacy in Russia for “the provocative actions” of the US diplomatic legation, which prevented the issuance of visas to representatives of the Russian media. Therefore, the rejection of the request for a visit to consult Evan Gershkovich on May 11 is also included.
The Moscow Urban Court did not grant an appeal to the defense of The Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, who is in pretrial detention for the next two months on accusations of espionage that the Kremlin made against the American. Gershkovich’s defense asked the Russian courts to change the precautionary measure from preventive detention to house arrest, but Moscow also rejected that measure.
Even the Dow Jones company offered to post a bond of about $612,000 or 50,000,000 rubles to make that request, although the court dismissed the offer. However, they remained firm in not approving Washington’s offer.
With information from EFE
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