Russian-American journalist jailed by Moscow for six-and-a-half years

A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, to six-and-a-half years in prison after a rushed, secret trial.

Kurmasheva, a Prague-based editor, was arrested last year during a family visit to the city of Kazan in south-west Russia for failing to register as a “foreign agent” and for spreading “false information” about the country’s armed forces, under crippling censorship laws enacted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, said the case against her was related to a book that she had edited entitled Saying No to War. 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

Kurmasheva, 47, who is married with two children, is the second US journalist to be sentenced in Russia in recent years.

She was convicted in Kazan on Friday, the same day that a court in Yekaterinburg convicted the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case widely described as a sham.

Gershkovich’s trial was similarly concluded with unusual haste, raising hopes of a prisoner swap involving the Wall Street Journal reporter, which has long been the subject of private discussions between Russian and US officials.

The US has repeatedly condemned Kurmasheva’s arrest; however, unlike the case of Gershkovich, Washington has not publicly indicated that it was looking to secure her release through a prisoner exchange.

Kurmasheva has also not yet been designated by the State Department as “wrongfully detained”, a status given to Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, another American convicted of spying in Russia, in 2020.

This designation implies that Washington considers the charges against them to be bogus and is committed to working for their release. Last week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched an urgent petition calling on the State Department to designate Kurmasheva as “wrongfully detained”.

Still, Kurmasheva’s verdict, handed down on the same day as Gershkovich’s, suggests that Russia might be seeking to trade her for Russians wanted by the Kremlin, including several deep-cover spies behind bars in the west.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has launched an unprecedented crackdown on protesters, independent news outlets and foreign social media networks.

In March 2023, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed off on a draconian law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” news about the military, in effect criminalising any public criticism of the war.

Stephen Capus, the RFE/RL president and CEO, on Monday denounced the trial of Kurmasheva and her conviction as “a mockery of justice” and said that “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors”.

“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Capus said in a statement to the Associated Press.