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The Arrest of Evan Gershkovich Is Further Evidence of Putin’s Brutality The Arrest of Evan Gershkovich Is Further Evidence of Putin’s Brutality
(32 minutes later)
Russia has a rich history of imprisoning people on bogus charges for no purpose other than to help keep a dictator in power. At the peak of the Stalinist purges, when millions were swept into the Gulag, the secret police nevertheless insisted on giving a veneer of legality to the dragnet with formal charges, witnesses, mug shots and trials. As Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, recalled in her memoir, “We never asked, on hearing about the latest arrest, ‘What was he arrested for?’” The official crime was never the real reason.Russia has a rich history of imprisoning people on bogus charges for no purpose other than to help keep a dictator in power. At the peak of the Stalinist purges, when millions were swept into the Gulag, the secret police nevertheless insisted on giving a veneer of legality to the dragnet with formal charges, witnesses, mug shots and trials. As Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, recalled in her memoir, “We never asked, on hearing about the latest arrest, ‘What was he arrested for?’” The official crime was never the real reason.
In his drive to consolidate power, silence opposition and lash out at the West, Vladimir Putin has drawn on many of the techniques of the Soviet secret police in which he was reared. Once again, people are being arrested and imprisoned not because they committed a crime but because they got in Mr. Putin’s hair, or he needed a hostage, or he wanted to send a signal. Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, two prominent Russian dissidents, are imprisoned because they opposed Mr. Putin.In his drive to consolidate power, silence opposition and lash out at the West, Vladimir Putin has drawn on many of the techniques of the Soviet secret police in which he was reared. Once again, people are being arrested and imprisoned not because they committed a crime but because they got in Mr. Putin’s hair, or he needed a hostage, or he wanted to send a signal. Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza, two prominent Russian dissidents, are imprisoned because they opposed Mr. Putin.
An American, Evan Gershkovich, a 31-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained since late March to demonstrate Mr. Putin’s disdain for the West and its democratic institutions.An American, Evan Gershkovich, a 31-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained since late March to demonstrate Mr. Putin’s disdain for the West and its democratic institutions.
An accomplished and widely respected journalist, Mr. Gershkovich was seized by the F.S.B., the Russian successor to the Soviet K.G.B., in Yekaterinburg on March 29 and has been accused — with no evidence provided — of espionage, a grave charge that carries a prison term of up to 20 years. It was last known to be used against an American reporter in the Soviet era, in 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff of U.S. News & World Report was arrested and accused of the same charge, which he denied, only to be swapped within weeks for an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations.An accomplished and widely respected journalist, Mr. Gershkovich was seized by the F.S.B., the Russian successor to the Soviet K.G.B., in Yekaterinburg on March 29 and has been accused — with no evidence provided — of espionage, a grave charge that carries a prison term of up to 20 years. It was last known to be used against an American reporter in the Soviet era, in 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff of U.S. News & World Report was arrested and accused of the same charge, which he denied, only to be swapped within weeks for an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations.
Hopefully, Mr. Gershkovich will be released as speedily. Brittney Griner, an American professional basketball player, spent almost 10 months in a Russian prison on drug smuggling charges before being swapped for a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout. In Mr. Gershkovich’s case, his arrest followed the indictment of an alleged Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian and reportedly entered an American university with that identity, though there has been no indication so far that the Russians are looking to swap for him.
In the years since Mr. Daniloff’s ordeal, hostage-taking in foreign countries has increased so much that the United States government has created an office, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, to focus on the release of Americans classified as “wrongfully detained” in foreign countries.