Putin’s Arrest of Gershkovich Will Deter Foreign Journalists from Working in Russia.

And this is exactly Putin’s goal.

We do not know all the details to understand why Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin arrested The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. We probably will never find out. There is no rule of law in Russia. Mr. Gershkovich will never be given an opportunity to prove his innocence in an independent court. Those don’t exist in Russia anymore. In the absence of facts, all we can do is speculate. A main hypothesis circulating in political circles is that Putin and his thuggish regime needed yet another hostage to trade for Russian criminals under arrest in Germany or Brazil. That could be. After all, Putin just recently negotiated the release of an actual Russian criminal, Viktor Bout, for an innocent American NBA star, Brittney Griner. But the Russians already have two Americans wrongfully detained in prison, Paul Whelan and Marc Fogel. Why do they need more? There must be more to this arrest of Evan Gershkovich.

Eliot Brown @eliotwb

In my 12 years at WSJ, I don't think I've seen any reporter glide into the newsroom so swiftly as Evan Gershkovich It's helpful for the world to know about Evan; to understand who he is. So many know him much better, but here is my tiny contribution: #IStandWithEvan #FreeEvan

My guess is that it has to do with Evan’s profession – journalism. Honest, critical, independent journalism is the kind that Putin especially fears and dislikes. And that’s exactly the kind of work Gershkovich was doing. I have never met Evan Gershkovich, but have been reading him for years. I have learned a lot from his work. And that is exactly why Putin wants to silence him, and others like him.

Putin has a long history of suppressing independent media. When Putin accidentally became the president of Russia in 2000, both the Russian people and Western analysts knew little about his policy preferences. In 1999, Yeltsin handpicked Putin from obscurity to become first prime minister, then acting president in January 2000, and then the ruling elite’s candidate to succeed Yeltsin in the presidential election in March 2000. Voters ratified Yeltsin’s choice, not the other way around. Initially, Putin expressed pro-Western positions. In 2000, when asked if Russia should join NATO, Putin answered, “Why not? Why not ... I do not rule out such a possibility... Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe... Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy.” He was also pro-market, dramatically cutting corporate and individual income taxes in the early years of his presidency. This move made Putin and his economic team the darlings of market reformers in Europe and the United States.

But from the very beginning, Putin was clear about his views on democracy. He was not a fan. (On that subject, I wrote a book in 2001: Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.) And from the very beginning, Putin considered independent media the biggest threat to his power. As Masha Lipman and I wrote in an article, called “Managed Democracy” in Russia: Putin and the Press in 2001, one year after Putin became president:

The verdict may still be out regarding Putin’s commitment to market reforms, but today, there is no doubt about his anti-democratic proclivities. More than any event in the Putin era so far, the destruction last spring of Media Most, the biggest independent Media Group in Russia, demonstrates unequivocally that Putin seeks to undermine Russia's fragile and weak democratic institutions.

Putin took control of Media Most, including its flagship television network, NTV, because he understood that reigning in independent media is key to securing and staying in power. While political parties and independent courts need time to take root, independent media can become an effective check on executive power much faster. That most certainly was true in Russia in the 1990s. And that’s why Putin wanted to seize control over media as fast as possible. And he succeeded. Within just a few years, Putin’s Kremlin controlled all of Russia’s major television networks. And some of Russia’s most talented investigative journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, were assassinated. 

Between 2008 and 2012, during the Medvedev era, independent media, investigative journalism, and anti-corruption organizations enjoyed a brief renaissance. The popular TV Rain launched its independent broadcasting in 2010. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny started his Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) in 2011. The explosion of online media and social media platforms helped independent channels operate relatively freely, gain traction and credibility, and build their audiences. Significantly, these independent media outlets helped expose fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2011, which then triggered the largest demonstrations in Russia since 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed.

So, things changed with Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012. Putin, paranoid about the United States orchestrating color revolutions and fomenting regime change in his alleged “neighborhood,” implemented new repressive legislation targeting independent media and NGOs working to inform Russians on how Russia was actually ruled. One of them was the now famous “foreign agent” law. Eventually, entities like TV Rain, ACF, Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, Proekt Media, and DOXA magazine, alongside many independent Russian journalists and activists, were declared foreign agents, extremist organizations, and criminals. Many were arrested, poisoned, or even assassinated. For example, in 2015, Putin assassinated the charismatic pro-democratic politician, Boris Nemtsov, who at the time was publishing detailed reports on Putin’s corruption, alongside his colleague Vladimir Milov. These were inconvenient facts for the Russian dictator.

Putin’s war against facts and the truth then fully mobilized right before Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time last year. Putin shut down almost all remaining serious independent media outlets, which forced many to flee and operate in exile. Putin implemented similar, if not more brutal tactics, to deal with political opposition. In August 2020, the Kremlin ordered the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. When he returned to Russia, Navalny was arrested and is now held at the harshest Russian prison on fabricated charges, working at a labor camp in Siberia. Political activists Alexei Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and many others have also been imprisoned for telling the facts about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Additionally, Putin blocked Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as the web pages of most media outlets operating outside of Russia. Now, there is speculation that the Russian government will soon ban YouTube, a vital source of news for Russians living in Russia today. 

After the war started, many foreign journalists left Russia. But some like Evan Gershkovich came back, still committed to trying to tell the truth about what was happening inside Russia. The last story of his that I read (and retweeted about before his arrest), written together with his colleague, Georgi Kantchev, was truly excellent reporting. They wrote:

As the war continues into its second year and Western sanctions bite harder, Russia’s government revenue is being squeezed and its economy has shifted to a lower-growth trajectory, likely for the long term…. “Russia’s economy is entering a long-term regression,” predicted Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian Central Bank official who left the country shortly after the invasion…  state revenue shortfalls suggest an intensifying dilemma over how to reconcile ballooning military expenditures with the subsidies and social spending that have helped President Vladimir Putin shield civilians from hardship…

Gershkovich was writing stories and reporting news that Putin did not want Russians or the world to read. Was it a coincidence that he was arrested just days after writing about the effects of sanctions on Russia’s economy? Maybe. But I doubt it. 

Putin may think he needs more hostages to trade for the increasing number of Russian spies being arrested around the world. Maybe Whelan and Fogel were not enough. But Putin’s wrongful arrest of Gershkovich also will deter other foreign journalists from working in Russia. And that’s exactly what Putin wants.