The Fight to Free Evan

On March 29, 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia on bogus espionage charges. He remains imprisoned in Moscow-a political hostage in his parents' homeland. Inside the struggle to bring him home

- By Charlotte Alter. Photograph by Natalia Kolesnikova

Mikhail recalls his father, who grew up under Stalin, offering a piece of advice: If you're going to tell a political joke, "make sure there are no witnesses." Mikhail and Ella both emigrated to the U.S. in 1979, seeking to escape rising antisemitism and life under Soviet rule. They met in Brooklyn in the 1980s, got married, and raised an American family in suburban New Jersey. Their daughter Danielle took swimming and gymnastics. Their son Evan played soccer.

"Here, we can relax," says Mikhail. "Just find yourself. Decide what you want to do." Evan Gershkovich decided he wanted to be a journalist, a calling that took him back to his parents' homeland. He had grown up speaking Russian, and wanted to use his familiarity with the language and culture to pursue his career. He worked as a reporter for the Moscow Times, Agence France-Presse, and the Wall Street Journal. When Ella worried about him writing articles critical of the Russian government or economy, her son explained that he was an "accredited journalist," his mother recalls, repeating the phrase as though it were a magic shield.

But it wasn't. On March 29, 2023, Evan Gershkovich was detained by Russian security forces while meeting a source at a restaurant in Yekaterinburg, an industrial city about a thousand miles east of Moscow. He has been a political prisoner in Moscow's Lefortovo prison for nearly a year, the first American journalist to be accused of espionage in Russia since the Cold War.