Yearning for freedom: Family awaits return of jailed US journalist

President Putin said he may be ready to trade Gershkovic for Vadim Krasikov (file photo)

Philadelphia, USA:

Nearly a year after US journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia on espionage charges, his parents are counting on President Joe Biden to make a “very personal” promise to bring him home.
The U.S. government announced that Gershkovich, who categorically denies espionage charges, was wrongfully detained and was negotiating a prisoner exchange.

“He made a very personal, very firm commitment,” Evan’s father Mikhail Gershkovic said in an interview with AFP this week, describing his meeting with Biden last April. Every effort will be made to bring Evan home, which means a lot to us.”

Gershkovic, 32, was detained in March 2023 while conducting an interview in the Urals and has been under pressure since Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison earlier this month. The effort to free Gershkovic became more complicated. Prisoner exchange plan under discussion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he may be ready to trade Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov. Vadim Krasikov is a Russian citizen serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a separatist commander in a Berlin park, but Western officials would not reveal any details about the incident. talks.

Meanwhile, Evan’s parents, Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union, spend their days in pain trying to maintain hope.

“We have no choice. We need to be strong, strong for Evan,” his mother Ella Millman told AFP.

“Sailing between two worlds”

Ella and Mikhail, now in their sixties, raised Evan and his sister Danielle, 34, who spoke Russian at home, ate Russian food, watched Soviet cartoons and knew not to whistle inside the house, Because it will bring bad luck.

“We were navigating between two worlds,” Danielle said from her apartment in Philadelphia. “This is what it’s like when you go to school in America and come home and be somewhere else.”

To learn about his parents’ birthplace, Evan moved to Russia in 2017 to work for the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times. His mother is excited for him, but his father is skeptical as he sees freedoms shrinking under Putin.

In Russia, Evan thrived as a journalist, covering politics but also seeking out less obvious stories, like efforts to preserve a disappearing indigenous language in a Russian province, or dying fish in a Siberian river. After a stint at AFP in Moscow, Evan was hired by the Wall Street Journal.

In September 2018, Ella and Danielle visited Evan in Moscow. The city had just hosted the 2018 World Cup and Evan was eager to show them this vibrant, modern capital with its rich social and cultural scene.

“We saw everything through his eyes,” Ella said. “It was great. I told him I left the country and you loved the country – what a change. I’m so happy for him.”

A few years later, the country Evan loved betrayed him.

“That’s my brother”

If convicted, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. He is the first Western journalist to be accused of espionage since the Soviet era. The Russian government has yet to provide any evidence to support the charges against him, and no date has been set for his trial.

For Ella, Mikhail and Danielle, life was filled with advocacy work, writing letters to him every week and waiting.

In Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, the reporter shared a small cell with another prisoner. He walks for an hour every day in the prison’s small courtyard, keeps fit through exercise, and relies on fruits and vegetables sent by friends to supplement the prison’s meager diet.

In May, Evan’s parents traveled to Moscow and spoke briefly with him in prison and in court.

The joy Ella felt was quickly overshadowed by the pain of having to leave him there. “When I saw him being taken out in handcuffs, it was so hard for me,” Ella said.

Last week, a Moscow court again extended Evan’s arrest pending trial as he looked wearily out of a glass defendant cage. As painful as these court proceedings are, they at least give his family a chance to see him.

“It’s those unexpected moments when you find happiness,” Danielle said. “Just seeing his little demeanor, just seeing: Oh, this is my brother.”

In his letters, Evan tries to remain upbeat and full of humor, discussing Artificial Intelligence with his father and mother – the famous long-running classic Russian novel he reads every day.

“He did the best in those very difficult situations,” Ella said.

Danielle, a university administrator, dreams of a family vacation when Evan returns home. She warned him that when she saw him, she would “crush the air from his lungs.”

“For me, it’s devastating knowing how much he’s missed and how much time he’s lost, and I miss him more and more every day,” Danielle said. “As an innocent man, it is unacceptable for him to stay there for one more day. We just want him to come home as soon as possible.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)