BRUSSELS — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that he had “no doubt” a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested by Russian security services last week during a reporting trip and accused of espionage was wrongfully detained, but that the process to reach an official determination on his detention was pending.
The official designation would rev up the U.S. government’s efforts to win Evan Gershkovich’s release. Supervision of his case would then shift to a State Department section known as the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, which is focused on negotiating for the release of hostages and other Americans classified as wrongfully detained in foreign countries.
Blinken told reporters in Brussels, where he was attending a ministerial summit for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that on his recent call with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, he expressed his views on the unacceptable and wrongful detention of Gershkovich and demanded that Russia release both Gershkovich and another American, Paul Whelan, who is being held on similar charges.
“In Evan’s case, we are working through the determination of wrongful detention,” Blinken said. “There is a process to do that and it’s something we are working through very deliberately but expeditiously as well.”
“In my own mind, there is no doubt that he is being wrongfully detained by Russia,” he added.
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A proposal to bring Whelan home has been “on the table” with Russia for several months, Blinken said, adding that he told Lavrov that Moscow “should move on that.”
According to the State Department’s official guidance, “every wrongful detention is different, and there is no one pre-determined way to secure the safe release of a person who has been wrongfully detained overseas.”
Typically, diplomats, lawyers and, if possible, witnesses weigh whatever information is known surrounding the circumstances of the individual’s detention and what, if any, evidence the host country has against the person, and make the determination.
It can often take months for a determination to be made and that is hardly ever done before the embassy gets consular access to the detained individual, with few exceptions. The decision to designate someone as wrongfully detained ultimately rests with the secretary of state.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said representatives from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow haven’t yet received approval for consular access to Gershkovich despite repeated requests.
“It will likely take some time, a couple of days, before we have access,” she told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
She declined to provide a specific time frame for the administration’s formal wrongful detainment determination. Pointing to Blinken’s comments, Jean-Pierre said, “That I think tells you everything that you need to know,” stressing that the issue is a priority for the administration.
She also declined to say whether President Joe Biden planned to speak to or meet with Gershkovich’s family.
Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov was summoned to the State Department March 30 in response to Gershkovich’s detainment, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Wednesday. Antonov met with Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, he said.
Lawyers engaged by the Journal visited Gershkovich for the first time on Tuesday, nearly a week after his detention by agents of the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB. The lawyers reported that Gershkovich was in good health and grateful for the outpouring of support from around the world, Emma Tucker, editor in chief of the Journal, said.
The White House on Tuesday declined to say whether the U.S. would consider a prisoner swap to secure Gershkovich’s release.
The “wrongfully detained” designation will start U.S. government agencies developing a strategy to secure Gershkovich’s release and will unlock U.S. government resources to work on the case. It broadens the State Department’s authority to exert pressure on the host country, monitor intelligence, build diplomatic coalitions, exert media pressure and fight for regular consular access.
The Journal has vehemently denied wrongdoing on the part of Gershkovich and called for his immediate release. Gershkovich is accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s Foreign Ministry.
Gershkovich was detained on March 29 and accused of espionage while on a reporting trip to the Russian provincial city of Yekaterinburg, about 800 miles east of Moscow. He is the first American journalist to be detained by Russian authorities since 1986, but he is one of several Americans deemed by Washington to be wrongfully detained by Russia in recent years.
Gershkovich is being held at Russia’s Lefortovo Prison, a pretrial detention center run by the FSB. FSB trials are typically conducted in secret, with little to no evidence shared about a defendant’s case.
Last week, Gershkovich appeared in court in Moscow with a state-appointed defense attorney and was ordered held until May 29.
Blinken said in March that the U.S. had put forward a “serious proposal” to secure Whelan’s release from Russia. While the State Department has refused to provide details, several U.S. officials have said that they had been looking at several Russian prisoners in U.S. custody that they would be willing to trade for Whelan, but that Moscow has refused.
The administration was unable to secure Whelan’s freedom from Russia in the same prisoner swap that brought home another detained American — women’s basketball star Brittney Griner — in December. Following Griner’s release, U.S. officials said that Russia refused to negotiate a deal for Whelan unless a former colonel from its domestic spy organization currently in German custody was also released as part of any prisoner swap.
In December, Griner landed in the U.S. after being released from a Russian penal colony as part of a prisoner exchange for a Russian arms dealer. The deal was brokered in part by the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs.
Griner had been convicted of drug smuggling and possession over a small amount of hashish oil found in her luggage at Moscow’s airport in February 2022 and was later convicted of drug smuggling and possession. She was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
In Griner’s case, the Russian government delayed granting regular consular access, leaving her to go months without seeing embassy representatives, U.S. officials said.
Whelan is also deemed wrongfully detained by the State Department. A corporate security executive from Michigan, he was arrested in December 2018 while visiting Russia for a friend’s wedding. He was sentenced to serve 16 years in a Russian penal colony and remains incarcerated. His family says the charges are bogus.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
