WSJ Moscow Bureau Correspondent Gershkovich Detained in Yekaterinburg Over Espionage, FSB Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent with the Wall Street Journal Moscow bureau accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, have been detained in Yekaterinburg on a suspicion of espionage, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.

"Illegal activities of UA citizen Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, accredited to the Russian Foreign Ministry, correspondent of the Moscow bureau of US newspaper The Wall Street Journal, suspected of spying for the US government, have been stopped," the FSB said in a statement.

On instructions from the United States, Gershkovich collected classified information "about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex." He was detained in Yekaterinburg while trying to obtain secret information.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stresses that detained correspondent was not engaged in any journalistic work in Yekaterinburg.

"What an employee of the US paper The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg has nothing to do with journalism. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the status of a "foreign correspondent", a journalistic visa and accreditation are used by foreigners in our country to cover up activities that are not related to journalism. He is not the first well-known Westerner who got caught in action," Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel.