One year ago, Russian authorities detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich while he was on assignment in Moscow.
On Friday, the Journal marked Gershkovich’s one year in detention with a large blank space on its front page, a somber reminder of the 32-year-old journalist’s “stolen year.”
“Evan has lost 12 months of normal existence as a kinetic and curious 32-year-old, a year he should have been jetting around Europe and the U.S. between groups of friends, his family and his reporting trips to Russia,” his friend and Journal colleague Eliot Brown wrote.
Via the Reliable Sources newsletter: This is the stop-in-your-tracks front page of Friday's Wall Street Journal, marking the one-year anniversary of Evan Gershkovich's detention (https://t.co/2OfBJDVAYS) pic.twitter.com/BPs5aAyOkc
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 29, 2024
The Wall Street Journal also sent a news alert, which read: “This alert should have gone to a story by Evan.”
Terrific alert from @wsj. pic.twitter.com/jRJv0GRSby
— Marcus Gilmer (@marcusgilmer) March 29, 2024
Gershkovich, whose parents fled the Soviet Union for the U.S., moved to Russia to work as a reporter in 2017 and joined the Journal in 2022.
He was detained on an espionage charge on March 29, 2023 — allegations the Journal vehemently denied. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
He is the first American reporter whom Russia has held on an espionage charge since the Cold War.








