A year after an American journalist was imprisoned in Russia, Biden threatened consequences

US President on the occasion anniversary of the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich by the Nazis, threatened consequences for the aggressor country for using Americans as bargaining chips, Reuters reports.

"We will continue to condemn and increase the cost to Russia for its terrible attempts to exploit Americans as a bargaining chip,” – Biden noted.

According to him, he told the journalist’s parents that he “would not lose hope,” and also promised to continue working every day to ensure his release.

At that time At the same time, the leaders of the US Congress from both parties, in particular the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer and the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, also issued a joint statement on Friday in which they called the arrest of the journalist groundless and unfair.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Gershkovich's arrest had made Russia's already limited media landscape “more repressive.”

In their statements Friday, Biden and Blinken also condemned the detention of former Marine Paul Whelan. arrested in Moscow in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges in 2020. He and the US government deny these accusations.

Prepared by: Nina Petrovich