The parents of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich said they are trying to remain optimistic their son will be released — even as birthdays and holidays pass while he is behind bars.
Gershkovich’s mother, Ella Milman, said the family is committed to maintaining a positive attitude about his case.
“That’s the best way we can cope with it,” she told NBC News.
“No pessimism, pessimism will kill.”
From a young age, Gershkovich has been curious about his parents’ home country, which they fled during the height of the Cold War, his mother told the outelt.
“He wanted to know the story of why we came to the United States,” she said, noting that he was “always interested” in learning more about the former communist nation.
Gershkovich, now 32, grew up in New Jersey speaking Russian at home, and when he decided to move to Russia to work as a journalist, his parents were excited for him.
Then when they went to visit him in their former homeland six years ago, the Gershkovichs saw how at home he was in the country.
“We saw Russia through his eyes,” Milman said.
“We were with such a great guide to a new Russia that we didn’t experience before.”
But everything changed after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Gershkovich fled Russia to live in London in the aftermath, but would regularly return to Russia to report on issues in the country for the Wall Street Journal.
During one of these trips on March 29, 2023, Gershkovich was arrested and charged with espionage — accusations rejected by him, the Wall Street Journal and the White House, which has declared him wrongfully detained.
He has been held behind bars in the country ever since.
“Evan is not here,” Milman said in the interview with NBC News on Tuesday. “It’s been a year.”
“It’s been all four seasons,” his father, Mikhail Gershkovich, added.
“There, he has spent his birthday and all the holidays.”
Gershkovich will now spend at least three more months behind bars in Russia, after a judge on Tuesday extended his pre-trial detention in a closed hearing.
The ruling marks the fifth extension of Gershkovich’s detainment, which now lasts until at least June 30.
US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said outside the courthouse that the reporter remained resilient, but said his detention was “particularly painful” given the one-year anniversary of his detainment, according to the Journal.
“The accusations against Evan are categorically untrue,” she said.
“They are not a different interpretation of circumstances. They are fiction,” she asserted.
Tracy went on to say Gershkovich’s detention is “not about evidence, due process or rule of law” and is instead about “using citizens as pawns to achieve political ends.”
In a statement, the Journal also said Wednesday’s ruling “ensures Evan will sit in a Russian prison well past one year.”
The outlet also slammed Gershkovich’s court hearings as “baseless proceedings that falsely portray him as something other than what he is — a journalist who was doing his job.
“He should never have been detained,” the statement continued. “Journalism is not a crime and we continue to demand his immediate release.”
Russian authorities have not publicly shared any evidence to support the espionage charges.
Gershkovich is the first Western journalist to be held on espionage charges since the fall of the Soviet Union.