The exodus began about a year ago, in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Western news organizations, faced with a crackdown on freedom of expression by President Vladimir V. Putin, pulled correspondents from Moscow and suspended their news gathering in Russia. The risk to journalists, in a country where describing a war as a “war” suddenly became a crime, was too great.
Some outlets, such as the BBC, are quickly resuming work in the country; others, like Bloomberg News, never returned. Newspapers that once had a permanent bureau in Moscow began rotating correspondents in and out of more secure posts like Berlin and Dubai. Yet Western correspondents, even under difficult circumstances, were hopeful that their work could continue.
Those hopes were shattered last week by the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter believed to be the first American reporter to be detained on charges of spying in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Journal rejects the claims against Mr Gershkovich, 31, a son of Soviet Jewish emigrants, and the Biden administration has lobbied for his release.
Mr Gershkovich was formally charged with espionage on Friday, according to Russian state media. The Tass news agency, citing an unidentified law enforcement source, also said he had denied the allegations.
Regardless of the outcome of Mr Gershkovich’s case, his arrest was an undeniable signal that foreign reporters were once again vulnerable. Now news organizations are once again exploring how to capture one of the world’s most pressing geopolitical stories while putting their journalists in even greater danger.
“It has a chilling effect on everyone,” said Polina Ivanova, a Russian correspondent for The Financial Times, at a recent gathering of journalists in London, where attendees lined up to write letters of support to Mr Gershkovich in the Lefortovo are delivered. prison in Moscow.
“It’s very difficult to know what the security situation is like when you work in a place like Russia, especially when things change very, very quickly,” Ms Ivanova said. “You have to constantly reassess and try to make a sensible analysis of the risks, based on signs and signals and things that are sometimes just in the tea leaves.”
Mr Gershkovich was accredited by Russia’s foreign ministry, a process that had continued even after the invasion of Ukraine and was believed to provide some degree of protection for Western journalists. The action against him distorted that assumption. The Journal’s Moscow bureau chief has left the country since his arrest. The New York Times has moved most of its desk abroad and currently has no reporters there, but regularly sends journalists to Russia.
American journalists, in particular, feared that Russian authorities would detain them in order to initiate a prisoner exchange. Correspondents who are European citizens were considered slightly less vulnerable. Gershkovich’s episode shows that now all bets are off.
“It is very clear that no foreign correspondent will be spared this repression,” said Gulnoza Said, who oversees press freedom in Russia for the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. “The world is losing that window to Russia and the Russian people are losing one of the few platforms through which they can be heard.”
On Friday, Senators Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, issued a rare joint statement calling on Russia to immediately release Mr. Gershkovich. “Journalism is not a crime,” the leaders wrote.
For a nation increasingly seen as an avatar of repression and autocracy, Russia had, until recently, given Western correspondents quite a bit of latitude in reporting on its politics, society and culture. Reporters assumed their movements and communications were monitored. But from the mid-1980s, Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms allowed Western journalists to interview citizens and cultivate sources in the bureaucracy.
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said the current situation was “180 degrees different” from his experience as a young reporter in Moscow from 1988 to 1992.
“Of course our phones were tapped; of course our apartments were bugged,” Mr. Remnick said in an interview. “The State Department was all over us. Our trip was limited. That said, we reported incredibly freely compared to what had been the case throughout the Soviet experience.
Within Russia, scoops reported by Western media were sometimes picked up by Russian state news services, and local journalists felt encouraged to quote foreign coverage when questioning state authorities.
For the Kremlin, the presence of journalists from prominent media such as the BBC, CNN and Agence France-Presse was seen as a sign of the government’s legitimacy and influence on the world stage. Foreign outlets also provided a means for Putin’s government to try to shape its global image and speak directly to a Western elite.
The invasion of Ukraine clearly shifted that calculus. Mr Gershkovich’s arrest was a signal that Mr Putin – who has made extensive efforts to hide Russia’s struggle in Ukraine from public view – may see less benefit in harboring foreign journalists.
Inside Russia, “propaganda is now complete,” said Ms Ivanova of The Financial Times. “It’s gone from a really loud voice to the only voice, and that’s kind of a transition that Russia has been going through over the last year.”
While local Russian journalists were suppressed or banned, Western news outlets looked for ways to maintain aggressive reporting. Numerous organizations – including the BBC, CNN and Reuters – still have correspondents in Moscow. Many reporters have cultivated a hybrid approach, in addition to occasional visits with remote reporting over the Internet and encrypted communications to stay in touch with sources. In Ukraine, journalists continue to cover the conflict from the front lines.
Bill Keller, who reported in Moscow for The Times from 1986 to 1991, said Mr Gershkovich’s arrest – a “hostage situation”, in Mr Keller’s eyes – was a clear attempt to defraud foreign reporters and the Russian citizens who possibly speaking to him. them.
“It may prolong the dismantling of foreign news agencies in Russia, but it will not stop reporting from surrounding countries,” said Mr. Keller, who later became editor-in-chief of The Times. Journalists reporting on Russia from abroad, he added, can now station themselves in more nearby areas such as the Baltic states and Ukraine, which were under Moscow’s control in previous generations.
Ms Ivanova, who has helped lead efforts to rally support for Mr Gershkovich and secure his freedom, said that “within the limits of what is possible” news organizations would try “to operate on the ground for as long as possible . ”
“Of course that comes with big challenges, and that computational process is very difficult, and sometimes things come at you that you didn’t expect at all,” she said. “But on-site reporting is absolutely essential.”
