In what the White House has described as “wrongful detention,” Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been imprisoned in Russia for one year.
On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden released a statement describing the date as “a painful anniversary.”
Biden said the 32-year-old went “to do his job as a reporter—risking his safety to shine the light of truth on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine.”
He noted that in one of Gershkovich’s letters to his parents from prison, the journalist wrote: “I am not losing hope.”
Biden stated, “As I have told Evan’s parents, I will never give up hope either. We will continue working every day to secure his release.”
The president also addressed Paul Whelan, another imprisoned American who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years on espionage charges, saying: “To Evan, to Paul Whelan and to all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad: We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring you home.”
