Maybe Mr. Gershkovich was seized as a pawn to swap for Russians held within the West, because the American basketball participant Brittney Griner was in 2022. Maybe it was as a result of Mr. Gershkovich’s mother and father are Russian Jews who emigrated within the Nineteen Seventies, so Mr. Putin views him, as he views Ukraine, as inside his sphere of repression.
As the primary anniversary of Mr. Gershkovich’s incarceration approaches, there isn’t any proof of a possible commerce, although Mr. Putin did recommend final month that it may occur. And there’s no indication {that a} trial is imminent. As an alternative, Mr. Gershkovich will quickly have spent a 12 months at Lefortovo, which was constructed within the nineteenth century and was infamous within the Soviet period as an interrogation heart for political prisoners, who’re sometimes held in solitary confinement. Human contact is strictly restricted: Solely legal professionals are normally allowed to go to.
Ms. Kurmasheva, a twin Russian and American citizen, lived together with her husband and two daughters in Prague and labored there as an editor for R.F.E./R.L.’s Tatar-Bashkir service. She traveled to the Russian metropolis of Kazan final Could to go to her ailing mom however was prevented from leaving, purportedly for failing to register her American passport. On Oct. 18 she was detained for failing to register as a “overseas agent,” and he or she has been held since.
Launched in 2012, the overseas agent regulation has been a central function of Mr. Putin’s efforts to painting the West as a devious enemy looking for to undermine Russia. The regulation requires any group or particular person in Russia who receives cash from overseas to register as a “overseas agent,” a phrase that, in Russian, carries a transparent connotation of espionage. In December, authorities in Kazan started one more investigation of Ms. Kurmasheva, this one for spreading false details about the Russian Military, and on Feb. 1, her pretrial detention was prolonged for 2 months.
Her husband, Pavel Butorin, who additionally works for R.F.E./R.L., has stated he suspects the brand new case entails a e-book that Ms. Kurmasheva and her colleagues coedited referred to as “Saying No to Battle: 40 Tales of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” a set of radio interviews with Russian individuals who expressed their antiwar emotions in several methods. (Certainly one of them stated she was arrested for braiding a inexperienced ribbon in her hair.) Opposing the warfare is a criminal offense in Russia, and R.F.E./R.L. itself has been branded an “undesirable group,” placing Russians in danger for any reference to it.