Credit: (The Wall Street Journal)

In high school, Evan Gershkovich was one of those students that did everything — he wrote for the school newspaper, made the varsity soccer team as a freshman, and excelled in the classroom. 

“I first met him, watched him play in some alumni pickup games as a rising freshman. And, I mean, it was clear he could pick things up very quickly. You know, he’s a sharp mind and he can get concepts across and understand things on the soccer field,” Wayne Sutcliffe, Gershkovich’s soccer coach at Princeton High School, said. 

As a senior, Gershkovich was unanimously chosen as team captain. That same year, in 2009, his team won the Group III State Championship. “He was just an extraordinary young man,” Sutcliffe said. 

Sutcliffe remembers hearing Gershkovich speak Russian to his parents at away games but didn’t anticipate his future as a Russia-based correspondent. 

“I knew that he had an interest in that culture and his background. I didn’t know and maybe he didn’t even … that he would be pursuing it to such an extent as a young writer and journalist,” Sutcliffe said. 

Russian roots 

Gershkovich wanted to embed himself in Russia, where both his parents emigrated from — and he had a desire to translate or decode the country and culture to an English-speaking audience. He quit his job as a news assistant at The New York Times to work for The Moscow Times, then Agence France-Presse, before becoming a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal. 

On March 30, Gershkovich was detained and arrested in Russia on espionage charges, while reporting on a story in Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains. He’s the first American journalist to be arrested on such charges in Russia since the Cold War.

Before becoming a Russian correspondent, Gershkovich had only been to the country once. 

“What I knew of the place consisted mostly of the bits and pieces gleaned from life in the home my parents were now moving out of — where we had eaten macaroni and butter instead of cheese, watched Nu, pogodi! instead of Hey Arnold!, spoken Russian instead of English,” Gershkovich wrote in Hazlitt Magazine in 2018. 

This week, Gov. Phil Murphy said that he has been in touch with Gershkovich’s family through intermediaries. Murphy joined the State Department and others in calling for his immediate release. 

The State Department has since designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which means that more resources are dedicated to his case. And it will allow the Biden administration to pursue a prisoner exchange to secure Gershkovich’s release. 

Telling the story  

At Bowdoin College, where he played Division III soccer, Gershkovich met journalist Jeremy Berke. After college, they were roommates for two years in Brooklyn. 

“He felt the calling to go to Russia and to tell the story of Russian people … he left New York in 2017. And at the time, the Russian economy was changing. There was a lot going on in the country and he felt like he could be the person to really bridge the gap between what Western audiences needed to know and the stories that Russian people wanted told,” Berke said. 

Credit: (Courtesy of Wayne Sutcliffe)

Berke said that Gershkovich “really lived in Russia in Moscow as a Muscovite.”  

“He knew all the cool bars, cafes, restaurants, DJs and everything. And he reported about the nightlife and the regular life,” Berke said. “After the war broke out, Evan’s reporting changed and he actually was one of the first reporters to break the story that wounded Russian soldiers are being transported across the border to Belarus and Belarus is helping Russia with the war effort.” 

‘He’s a guy who was always at his best when the pressure was greatest.’ — soccer coach Wayne Sutcliffe  

Gershkovich is “a classic Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent,” said A. Craig Copetas, a reporter for the paper in Paris and Moscow in the 1980s and on and off from 1991 to 2002. While he didn’t know him personally, Copetas, also a former bureau chief for The Village Voice, said he followed Gershkovich’s work closely. 

“His stories were quite good. And I’m sure the quality of his stories also angered the Kremlin and I think that’s important for people to realize … So I would hope that all your readers take the time to go to The Journal (and) read Evan’s stories,” Copetas said. “You’ll learn a lot about Russia, you’ll learn a lot about Evan, and you’ll learn a lot about, you know, what it takes for a young person, a young reporter, to have the gumption and the moxie to dive into Russia to cover this story and when you cover it too good, what the consequences are.” 

‘A hostage situation’ 

On April 18, a Moscow court is scheduled to hear an appeal from Gershkovich’s lawyers. Copetas described Gershkovich’s circumstance as “a hostage situation.” 

“Putin kidnaps Westerners so he can swap for Russians. So what Putin is doing is he’s investing in a commodity … He’s looking to do a swap deal with the caveat here (being) we don’t know how long it’s going to take,” Copetas said. 

Gershkovich’s lawyers visited him April 4 at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison. According to The Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich is in good health. 

“He’s a guy who was always at his best when the pressure was greatest … he’s in a rough spot, but knowing Evan, you know, his resilience and his intelligence and his fortitude, you’ve got to hope that he’s dealing with it as best he can,” Sutcliffe said.

— Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that Evan Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War.