A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for U.S.Congress- funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), to six and a half years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army.
This happened on the same day that another court in Yekaterinburg sentenced another U.S. citizen, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to sixteen years in prison.
That makes them two of six Americans recently convicted and jailed in Russia. Gershkovich, like Kurmasheva, has a Russian background but lives and works in the U.S. Many critics say Russia is accumulating prisoners as bartering chips.
Kurmasheva, 47, is based in Prague and has been held in custody since October 18, when she was arrested while visiting family in Russia.
She had been detained briefly earlier on her return flight, and both her passports were confiscated.
A court initially found her guilty of failing to declare that she had a U.S. passport, which is indeed mandatory under Russian law, and fined her.
But things escalated: a week later, she was charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent”, to which she pleaded not guilty.
Her husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, has said her arrest was related to a book that she had edited entitled “Saying No to War. 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”.
Butorin has petitioned for the U.S. government to designate Kurmasheva as wrongfully detained, as Washington views the case of Gershkovich, to open up further diplomatic avenues to negotiate her release. Washington has called for her released.
Russia repudiates Radio Free Europe as an undesirable foreign agent – which is what Kurmasheva herself has been called.
