Appearing in court, Evan Gershkovich would often crack a smile or laugh for the cameras from inside the glass-walled cage he was being held in. On another occasion, he made a heart shape with his hands and put it to his chest. A message to family, friends and the wider world that the trumped-up espionage charges for which he was handed a 16-year sentence would not break him.
It is a fate he had seen befall many others – dissidents, critics and journalists – but the risk increased significantly in the wake of Vladimir Putin ’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Gershkovich tweeted in July of that year that it had become “a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years”. Less than 12 months later, he was in prison himself – the first US journalist to be accused of spying in Russia since the Cold War.
The 32-year-old was detained while doing his job. He was on a reporting trip for his newspaper, The Wall Street Journal ( WSJ ), to Yekaterinburg, around 900 miles east of Moscow. A day later, he was presented inside a Moscow courthouse, flanked by security personnel, wearing a mustard coat, its hood pulled over his head.
Reaction was swift and vociferous; the arrest was denounced by the WSJ , the White House and world leaders. But the calls for him to be released were ignored by Moscow, which tried to claim he had been caught red-handed with classified material. No such evidence has ever been produced in the public domain.
For more than a year, Gershkovich waited in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, which has traditionally held Soviet dissidents, without a trial date. He was locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, allowed out for some exercise in the cramped and heavily patrolled yard. It is a facility designed to oppress; carpets deaden footsteps so that silence reigns inside, while a radio system is often used to blast music across outside spaces to ensure prisoners can’t hear each other.
The isolation was tough for an extrovert such as Gershkovich. “His bright smile and loud chuckle made you want to be his friend,” wrote Eliot Brown, a WSJ reporter. “He’s a magnet for friends, picking them up wherever he travels. He exudes a zest for life, a constant set of jokes and laughs that make you want to hang out more.”
Friends and colleagues wanted to make sure he knew he was not alone, so set up a system for sending letters that had to be painstakingly translated into Russian to make it past censors. Thousands of letters were written, with as many as possible sent. Gershkovich also read plenty of Russian literature, including War and Peace .
His parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, sent him updates on life – and Arsenal football scores, a passion picked up as a child following the Premier League. Writing back, Gershkovich would urge them to stay upbeat.
They flew to Moscow multiple times for his hearings; last year, Ella was able to talk to her son for a few minutes through his glass wall. “It was just like, I forgot where I was,” she told a WSJ podcast. “We discussed a lot of stuff in that short period of time, how I’m still being his mother in his letters, and how happy he was to see us being strong,” she said. “He smiled.”
Ella and Mikhail fled the Soviet Union in the late 1970s and met in New York. They settled in New Jersey, giving birth first to a daughter, Danielle, and then Evan in October 1991, two months before the Soviet Union dissolved. Gershkovich was immersed in his parents’ culture. The family spoke Russian, ate Russian cooking and followed his mother’s Russian superstitions – like no whistling in the house or setting keys on the table. He grew up to be an excellent cook.
Described by his mother as someone who was “very, very curious from an early age” and his father as having “questions about everything”, he would pick up the cello as a boy. He attended Princeton High School and then the small, private Bowdoin College in Maine, studying philosophy and English. A college friend called him the “most extroverted person I have ever known”.
Gershkovich settled in New York, working for a while as a cook. He would make Russian dishes for his roommates, and get up to watch Arsenal games at 7am local time, while making breakfast. He would break into journalism via a job as a news assistant at The New York Times , before landing a role with the English-language Moscow Times in Russia. His reporting on Russia’s response to Covid-19 and Putin’s increasing crackdown on dissent brought him to UK screens through appearances on BBC News and other broadcasters.
Gershkovich felt the pull of Russia – a place he’d visited as a child and fascinated him. He believed his Russian-language skills and knowledge of the culture put him in a unique position to explain Russia to the outside world.
He adopted the Russian name Vanya, rather than Evan, and formed a tightknit friendship group of journalists and expats. They spent holidays at lake houses, relaxed in Moscow’s banyas (steam baths), and watched and played sports together.
Weeks before Russia’s invasion, Gershkovich landed what was his dream role, as a Russia reporter for the WSJ . Given the war, he would be based in the publication’s London office, heading back to Russia for reporting trips, delving into the murky world of Putin’s wartime decision-making and interviewing Russian soldiers about their losses as attempts to take Kyiv were repelled by Ukrainian forces. He was seen as a gregarious and joyful member of the team in London.
Then came the trip to Yekaterinburg, and imprisonment. During his time in jail, he learnt of the death in a Siberian prison of Putin’s biggest critic, Alexei Navalny. Family and friends kept up pressure for his release.
Rumours of a possible prisoner swap to secure his release have swirled for months; Gershkovich was eventually convicted of espionage last month at a swift, behind-closed-doors trial in Yekaterinburg. Following his conviction, the time for the long-rumoured exchange is now seemingly at hand.
His family and friends now hope to see him smile again; this time, in person.
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