Jailed WSJ Reporter in Letter Home Says He Is ‘Not Losing Hope’
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since March 29. By Elizabeth Bernstein and Alan Cullison April 14, 2023 6:44 pm ET Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in his first letter to his family since being arrested in Russia on espionage allegations, said he remains optimistic, looked forward to seeing them and joked about prison food. “I want to say that I am not losing hope,” he wrote in a brief, two-page note that his family in Philadelphia received on Friday. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.” The handwritten letter, dated April 5, is the first direct contact Mr. Gershkovich has had with his family since
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since March 29.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in his first letter to his family since being arrested in Russia on espionage allegations, said he remains optimistic, looked forward to seeing them and joked about prison food.
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” he wrote in a brief, two-page note that his family in Philadelphia received on Friday. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.”
The handwritten letter, dated April 5, is the first direct contact Mr. Gershkovich has had with his family since his arrest more than two weeks ago in Russia.
The letter was written in Russian, the language he speaks at home with his parents, both Soviet émigrés. His mother, Ella Milman, said Mr. Gershkovich leavened the letter with gentle teasing of his parents, in an apparent effort to keep his family’s spirits up.
A letter from Evan to his family, written in Russian, reads in part: ‘I love you very-very much and hug you tightly. I received your words of support from the lawyers yesterday. Thank you very much. Until we meet soon. Write me. -Vanya’
Photo: Ella Milman
“Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food,” he wrote. “In the morning, for breakfast, they give us hot creamed wheat, oatmeal cereal or wheat gruel. I am remembering my childhood.”
A photograph of a care package delivered to Evan Gershkovich by a friend in Russia.
Mr. Gershkovich, 31, was detained by Russian security services on March 29 while on a reporting trip in the Russian provincial city of Yekaterinburg. He is accused of espionage in the interests of a foreign state.
The Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny the charge. The State Department has designated Mr. Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained.” The designation launches a broad U.S. effort to exert pressure on Russia.
Mr. Gershkovich now faces what specialists in Russia’s legal system said will be a lengthy court process with scant hope of acquittal.
Mr. Gershkovich addressed the letter to his “dear family”—his mother, father Mikhail and sister Danielle, whom he referred to by her family nickname, Duscia. The family recently spoke out for the first time since their son’s arrest, in a video interview with the Journal.
Ms. Milman, 66, said she felt “great joy” upon receiving the letter, because she is finally hearing firsthand how he is doing. “These are my son’s words, not someone else telling me,” she said. “And his spirit is shining.”
As he faces allegations of espionage, all of Mr. Gershkovich’s prison meetings and correspondence will be monitored by Russia’s security services, and court proceedings will be held before a judge behind closed doors, according to the Russian legal specialists.
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So far, Mr. Gershkovich has only been allowed visits from his Russian lawyers. He hasn’t yet been allowed to see friends or officials from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, despite repeated demands for access.
In the letter, Mr. Gershkovich confirmed he received a care package, arranged by a friend and containing sundries such as toiletries, slippers, clothes and pens, to ease his life in confinement at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, run by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB.
“I now have more clothes and stuff than mom and dad at home, I think,” he wrote.
Lefortovo traditionally has held high-profile inmates including Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, several 1991 coup plotters against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
In a nod to the emotional toll his imprisonment is taking on his family members, he acknowledged that they would probably like to smack him.
“Don’t worry. You will have your chance to do it,” he wrote.
He signed the letter with his nickname: “Until we meet soon. Write me. Vanya.”
Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at [email protected] and Alan Cullison at [email protected]
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