WNBA superstar Brittney Griner is speaking out about the plight of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who was detained in Russia last week on dubious espionage charges, for which the Kremlin has not provided any evidence. Gershkovish filed an appeal against his arrest on Monday, reported the Russian state news agency TASS. Gershkovich and the WSJ have denied all allegations.

The reporter is being held in pre-trial detention center until May 29 at the notorious Lefortovo prison, where political prisoners were mass executed under Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and where KGB officers tortured opponents. Former US marine Paul Whelan is also being held in Lefortovo. 

The first American journalist detained on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. 

Brittney Griner Speaks 

In an Instagram post, Griner and her wife Cherelle said their “hearts are filled with great concern” for Gershkovich, 31, and his family.

“Every American who is taken is ours to fight for and every American returned is a win for us all,” the couple wrote, adding that the Biden administration should use “every tool possible to bring Evan and all wrongfully detained Americans home.”

President Biden urged Russia to release Gershkovich in a statement Friday. 

“Let him go,” the president told White House reporters in response to questions about his message to Russia.

Gershkovich, the son of Soviet immigrants, moved to Russia in 2017 to take his first reporting job with the Moscow Times, according to the New York Times. He was hired by the Wall Street Journal in January 2022 to be the newspaper's Moscow correspondent.

When Russia’s Federal Security Service arrested Gershkovich, the agency accused him of trying to secure classified information, an accusation he and the WSJ vehemently deny.

According to the Committee to Journalists, 82 Russian journalists have been killed in their country between 1992 and 2023. Thirteen of them were murdered in contract style since Vladimir Putin took office in 1999. No one has been brought to justice in any of the slayings.

More than 30 news organizations and advocates for press freedom have also written Russia’s US ambassador to express their concern that Russia is criminalizing internal reporting. 

Photo: A. Savin of Lefortovo prison on Wikipedia and Evan Gershkovich photo on LinkedIn