The family of Evan Gershkovich has spoken out for the first time since the Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested last month in Russia, saying they are “optimistic” that the dire situation will be resolved. 

“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, be optimistic, believe in happy, happy endings, and that’s where we stand right now,” Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, told the Journal in an interview published on Friday.  

“But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved. But that’s what I choose to believe,” she said. 

Gershkovich’s sister, Danielle, said she and her parents are trying to stay “positive.”

Milman said her son’s arrest was a “shock” even as she had an “uncertain” feeling.

“You have the mother’s sixth sense?” she was asked. 

“Yes. That’s why I reached to him on Monday. Wednesday he got arrested,” she said. 

Danielle said her brother, whom she saw last at her wedding, is embodied with the strength of her parents, who emigrated to the US from the former Soviet Union.

‘You’ve met my parents. They’re incredibly strong, strong people,” she told the interviewer. “And I think he has their strength.”

Danielle was then asked whether the media coverage of her brother’s arrest and detention in Russia was helpful or painful.

“It’s strangely helpful for me. It’s terrifying, refreshing the news and seeing article after article, but it’s also great seeing his face. My family has incredible friends, an incredible peer network. We’re going to do whatever it takes. And we’re just gonna stay positive,” she said. 

Gershkovich, 31, was arrested March 29 in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage, based on accusations that he was trying to obtain classified information about a military facility. 

Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal and US officials have denied the charges. 

On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared Gershkovich “wrongfully detained,” a designation that gives the US government more tools to push for the reporter’s release. 

Gershkovich, the first foreign reporter to face spying charges in Russia since the Cold War, is being held in a Moscow prison.

The reporter’s parents, Ella and Mikhail, fled the USSR separately in 1979 and met in New York City.

They settled in New Jersey where they raised their two children. 

Mikhail Gershkovich was asked in the interview if he had any apprehensions about his son wanting to cover Russia. 

“No. But I trusted him. I trusted his judgment. Of course, it makes things more difficult for me now, because I felt I failed in some way as a father,” he answered. 

The elder Gershkovich was then asked whether he could have stopped Evan from returning to Russia as a journalist.

“Of course[not]. I couldn’t have stopped him when he was 15, let alone now,” Mikhail said.

Gershkovich, a Russian speaker, worked at Agence France-Presse and the English-language Moscow Times before joining the WSJ in January 2022, a month before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. 

Evan as conditions deteriorated for foreign reporters in Russia, Gershkovich remained in the country. 

In December his byline appeared on a report in the Journal that questioned whether Russian President Vladimir Putin grasped the dire situation facing his forces in Ukraine and pointing out that he had become isolated and was increasingly relying on a small cadre of yes-men. 

Ella Milman said that article “worried” her. 

“I think once that article came out about Putin in December, [it] got me worried a lot. Like my mood was changing,” she said. 

Ella remembered visiting their son in 2018 and talking about how differently they viewed Russia and the complex history that both generations have with the country. 

“I said to him that this is the country that I left and this country that you love,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘What an interesting thought.'”