![]() ![]() He walked on the team at Bowdoin and, despite not playing all season, made the winning point at a conference tournament in his freshman year. When he was captain of the Princeton High School soccer team in his senior year, they won the state championship. Whether playing the sport himself, watching it over beers, or teasing strangers about the superiority of his beloved Arsenal team, Gershkovich carried his love for soccer across continents. "Very intelligent, very smart, speaks Russian really well, and really understands Russia." Soccer fan - and sometimes star "He's a great person, but he also is a great journalist," she told ABC News. ![]() Sofiya Voznaya, a Kazakhstan-born artist, recalled her awe when she first met Gershkovich in Moscow two years ago, having already read his reporting on how Russia handled COVID. "Russia was always a huge part of his life." "With his parents, I think there was always a more dynamic relationship with their views on Russia, but for Evan, he was always very proud and that showed when he was in Moscow," Foster said. The siblings spoke Russian at home and watched Soviet-era cartoons with their parents, Ella and Mikhail, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, during a time of mass exodus for Russia's Jewish population.Īfter graduating from Bowdoin as a philosophy and English major in 2014 and then moving to Brooklyn, Gershkovich spent several weekends out of the year visiting his grandmother in Brighton Beach, home to the largest Russian-speaking population in the Western Hemisphere. Gershkovich grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with one older sister, Danielle, whom he adores. Here's how they described him to ABC News: Russian culture enthusiast Sauer, Patterson and Foster are among a network of friends, stateside and abroad, who have sprung into action to demand Gershkovich's release. Others say his imprisonment is also a way to intimidate Western journalists still reporting in Russia as President Vladimir Putin faces widespread recriminations for invading Ukraine. ![]() Russian investigators now allege he was "acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex" and "trying to obtain secret information" at the time of his arrest.įoreign policy experts speculate it's more likely the Kremlin is using Gershkovich as a pawn to make a prisoner exchange for one or more high-profile Russians imprisoned abroad, similar to the case of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Marine Corp veteran Paul Whelan who is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence on espionage charges. Gershkovich has pleaded not guilty and the Wall Street Journal has vehemently denied the allegations, calling the charges “categorically false" in a statement Friday.ĭozens of the world’s leading media outlets have condemned Gershkovich’s arrest, signing onto a letter released by the Committee to Protect Journalists defending him as a reporter doing his job. Gershkovich, a New Jersey native who has lived and worked in Moscow as an accredited journalist for the last six years, was in a restaurant in Yekaterinburg last Wednesday, March 29, when Russia's Federal Security Service arrested him on espionage charges that the Wall Street Journal, his colleagues and the U.S. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images, FILE ![]()
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