Evan Gershkovich details Russian arrest, reveals moment that nearly broke him during wrongful detention

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was detained by Russia for more than a year before being freed in a massive prisoner swap in 2024, spoke to “Fox & Friends” about his arrest in Russia.

Gershkovich discussed his new book, “This Cursed Beautiful Land,” a firsthand account of the ordeal.

“I and a colleague of mine were reporting on basically how Russia was prepping to defend. They were changing their economy to a military footing, and I was meeting with a source of a colleague of mine who we thought was legitimate. We had been speaking to him for four years at that point and it turned out it was a setup,” Gershkovich told “Fox & Friends,” describing how he ended up being wrongfully detained.

Host Brian Kilmeade pointed to an excerpt in the book that described Gershkovich’s realization that the men arresting him were from the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, and not just police.

“At that moment, when you hear FSB, you understand that, as I write, it’s not a misunderstanding,” Gershkovich said. “When it’s the FSB, you understand it’s a high-level planned operation. And I’m taken out in a hood to a van, asked who I work for, I say the Wall Street Journal, the hood comes back on, my midsection is pummeled by the security agents, hood comes back off, they ask who I work for, and that’s when it dawns on me, that OK they’re accusing me of espionage.”

He said he was “obviously” scared at that point, and said, “When I get to the station, they just calmly hand me my charges and they tell me I’m accused of espionage,” Gershkovich said.

“And there’s also this moment that obviously the, the source, Pavel, stepping away out into the crowd. At that point I realized, oh, this was a setup and this was a setup for a swap, clearly,” he continued.

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Gershkovich, 34, was arrested on March 29, 2023, while reporting on a trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg and accused of espionage. The Biden administration declared him “wrongfully detained” and The Wall Street Journal and U.S. government both emphatically denied the charge, which was widely condemned as a thinly disguised effort to take the reporter hostage.

After more than a year of delays, he was convicted in 2024 in a closed court of “gathering secret information” and sentenced to 16 years at a penal colony. Wall Street Journal leaders blasted the “sham conviction” and repeatedly called for his immediate release while his friends, family and the journalism community worked to keep his name in the spotlight.

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Kilmeade asked Gershkovich on Thursday to describe the moment that almost broke him while in Russian prison.

He said he could see what the Biden administration was trying to do to bring him home through a potential prisoner exchange involving the U.S., Russia and Germany.

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“It’s around the winter where a deal is starting to come together where Paul Whelan, who was also arrested on espionage charges in Russia, and myself are going to be traded for, or a deal would be put to the Russians for myself and Paul Whelan and the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be released from Russia, and Vadim Krasikov, the FSB assassin who had been arrested in Germany and was convicted to life in prison there, would be going back to Russia,” Gershkovich said.

However, he said that while he was out on a walk, he heard on the radio that Navalny had been killed.

“I’m out on a walk, it’s February. It’s really cold. We usually get to listen to a news station called Relax FM. We listen to music. Suddenly the radio station changes. It switches to the news station and it’s announced that Alexei Navalny has been killed. At that moment, it’s really bleak for me. I think, ‘Okay, there’s no way I’m getting home now,'” he said.

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Gershkovich, along with former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, was finally freed as part of a massive multinational prisoner swap in August 2024.

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Fox News’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.