High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said that Brussels condemns the detention of American journalist Evan Gershkovich in Russia.
Journalists should be allowed to freely carry out their professional activities, as they deserve protection
– wrote the head of European diplomacy on his page in the social network.
Meanwhile, the reaction of the Russian authorities was not long in coming. Here is how the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova spoke about this:
Mr. Borrell, it would be great if you would also zealously stand up for Julian Assange and Marat Kasem in your time. At least for the sake of decency.
At the same time, the Russian diplomat drew the attention of the EU leadership to the fact that an employee of the American edition of The Wall Street Journal has nothing to do with journalism, since all this was a front to cover up his intelligence activities by providing him with a journalistic visa and accreditation by the US authorities, issuing him for a "foreign correspondent". Moreover, Zakharova stressed, this is far from the first such case in Russia.
Recall that Evan Gershkovich, who works in the Moscow bureau of the WSJ newspaper, was detained the day before by FSB officers in Yekaterinburg. The department said that they caught the attacker red-handed, since there are serious suspicions that he was trying to get secret information about the work of one of the military-industrial complex enterprises, which is a state secret. A criminal case was initiated against him under Art. 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (espionage).