US President Joe Biden called upon the Russian government to set free The Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich who was arrested in Moscow on an espionage charge.
“Let him go”, Biden said in response to CNN journalist’s question while he was leaving the White House.
The US president commented on the Gershkovich case for the first time.
Still, Biden said that the US is not planning to expel Russian diplomats or journalists from the country as of now.
Earlier, WSJ called for the Russian ambassador and all Russian journalists to be expelled from the US in response to their journalist Evan Gershkovich being arrested.
“The U.S. government’s first duty is to protect its citizens, and too many governments now believe they can arrest and imprison Americans with impunity. The brazen arrest of an American journalist shows the declining ability of the U.S. to deter assaults on its citizens,” WSJ writes.
Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov reacted to WSJ’s proposal, branding it “absurd”, and said that foreign journalists “don’t face any restrictions” in Russia and are “working just fine”.
