MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin is not currently interested in giving an interview to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was released from Russian prison last month, nor to any other Western media, the Kremlin said on Monday.
Gershkovich, who was convicted in Russia on espionage charges that he, his newspaper and Washington strongly denied, asked the Kremlin leader for an interview when he was released in a major East-West prisoner swap on August 1, the Wall Street Journal reported. reported.
Asked on Monday if there was a response to Gershkovich’s request, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “So far we are not interested in such an interview.
“For there to be an interview with foreign media, and a specific one, we have to have an opportunity. So far we don’t see such an opportunity.”
Many Western journalists have left Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Gershkovich, who was based outside Russia but continued to travel to the country, was arrested in March 2023 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg during a reporting trip.
The first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War, Gershkovich was jailed for 16 years in July after a court found him guilty of gathering secret information on the orders of the US Secret Service about a company that makes Russian tanks. sent to Ukraine.
In February, Putin gave a rare interview to American journalist Tucker Carlson, in which he said Moscow was prepared to fight for its interests “to the end” but had no interest in a further war.
(Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)