A Russian court has sentenced the US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to six-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly reporting false information about the army.
The verdict was handed down on Friday in a closed session, the daily newspaper Vedomosti reported, citing documents from the Supreme Court of Tatarstan.
The reason for the sentence was a book she published in November 2022 titled Saying No to War. 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, according to the Russian opposition platform Meduza.
At almost the same time, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Moscow for alleged espionage following a closed-door trial.
The United States has repeatedly accused the Russian government of abusing US citizens to achieve political goals.
Kurmasheva, 47, who works for the Tatar-Bashkir service of the US foreign broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), had been jailed since October.
Stephen Capus, head of RFE/RL, called the trial and conviction “a mockery of justice”.
He added that “the only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors”.
“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” he said.
02:33
Moscow court sets appeal date for jailed WSJ reporter seeking to lift his pre-trial detention
Moscow court sets appeal date for jailed WSJ reporter seeking to lift his pre-trial detention
Kurmasheva holds both US and Russian citizenship. According to her broadcaster, the 47-year-old, who lives in Prague, had travelled to Russia in May 2023 to visit her mother.
Just before her planned return flight, her passports were confiscated.
Kurmasheva was convicted of “spreading false information” about the military, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. Court spokeswoman Natalya Loseva confirmed Kurmasheva’s conviction and revealed the sentence to Associated Press by phone in the case classified as secret.
“My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home,” Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, said in a post on Monday on X.
Radio Free Europe, which is now based in Prague, was founded in 1949 at the height of the Cold War. The US Congress provides the annual budget of more than US$100 million.
RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a foreign agent, but it has challenged Moscow’s use of foreign agent laws in the European Court of Human Rights. The organisation has been fined millions of dollars by Russia.
In February, RFE/RL was outlawed in Russia as an undesirable organisation. Its Tatar-Bashkir service is the only major international news provider reporting in those languages, in addition to Russian, to audiences in the multiethnic, Muslim-majority Volga-Urals region.
03:14
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich detained in Russia on espionage charges
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich detained in Russia on espionage charges
The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicised legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously signalled a possible exchange involving Gershkovich, but said a verdict in his case must come first.
Arrests of Americans are increasingly common in Russia, with nine US citizens known to be detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated over fighting in Ukraine.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the US.
He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will be counted as part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison – a Czarist-era lock-up used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.
Gershkovich was the first US journalist arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by Gershkovich’s arrest, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden said after Gershkovich’s conviction that the reporter “was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American”.
US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow last week of treating “human beings as bargaining chips”. She singled out Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, 53, a corporate security director from Michigan, who is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on spying charges that he and the US denied.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that when it comes to Gershkovich, Whelan and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia and elsewhere, the US is working on the cases “quite literally every day”.
Sam Greene of the Centre for European Policy Analysis said the conviction and sentencing of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich on the same day “suggests – but does not prove – that the Kremlin is preparing a deal. More likely, they are preparing to offer up a negotiating table that Washington will find it difficult to ignore.”
In a series of posts on X, Greene stressed that “the availability of a negotiating table shouldn’t be confused with the availability of a deal”, and that Moscow has no interest in releasing its prisoners – but it is likely to “seek the highest possible price for its bargaining chips, and to seek additional concessions along the way just to keep the talks going”.
Washington “should obviously do what it can” to get Gershkovich, Kurmasheva, imprisoned opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and other political prisoners out, he said, adding: “But if Moscow demands what it really wants – the abandonment of Ukraine – what then?”
