Russia sentences U.S. dual national journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to prison for reporting amid Ukraine war
A Russian court has convicted Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced her to 6½ years in prison after a secret trial, court records and officials said Monday.
The conviction in the city of Kazan came on Friday, the same day that a court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison in a case that the U.S. called politically motivated. The U.S. government has labeled Gershkovich wrongfully detained by Russia, a distinction the State Department has not made in Kurmasheva's case.
Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir service, was convicted of "spreading false information" about the military, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. Court spokesperson Natalya Loseva confirmed to The Associated Press by phone that Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6½ in prison in a case classified as secret, with no details available of the nature of the accusations against her.
Asked Monday about the verdict, RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus denounced the trial and conviction of Kurmasheva as "a mockery of justice."
"The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors," he said in a statement. "It's beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family."
Asked about her during a regular press briefing on July 16, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated a general statement to reporters that "journalism is not a crime," and that the U.S government had "urged her swift release" by Russia.
Miller said he did not "have any new information to provide about a wrongful detention determination."
The journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which goes by its French acronym RSF, has launched a petition calling on the U.S. government to make a wrongful detention determination for Kurmasheva.
"Her targeting was undoubtedly the result of her journalism," the group says on its campaign webpage, calling for the decision that it says "could marshal the full government resources to secure her release."
Kurmasheva, who holds U.S. and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters, was taken into custody in October 2023 and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent while collecting information about the Russian military. Later she was also charged with spreading "false information" about the Russian military under legislation that has effectively criminalized any public expression about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin line.
Kurmasheva was initially stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her ailing elderly mother. Officials confiscated her U.S. and Russian passports and fined her for failing to register her U.S. passport. She was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was arrested on new charges in October that year.
Speaking to CBS News earlier this year, the reporter's 15-year-old daughter Bibi Butorin said the family understood it was a risk for Kurmasheva to travel to Russia, "but she was only going to go for two weeks, and it was for my sick grandmother."
"My mom is definitely my biggest inspiration," Bibi said. "And I just miss her, like, more than I can possibly say. And I worry about her safety so much."
Kurmasheva is listed as an editor on a book that features stories of everyday people who oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"I know that this book is a problem; it's featured in her case file," Pavel Butorin, Kurmasheva's husband, told CBS News. "There is nothing incendiary, nothing criminal about these stories. There's no calls for violence in the book. It's just opinions – not even Alsu's opinions. But as a journalist, she certainly has the right to collect and publish any opinions."
RFE/RL has repeatedly called for her release.
RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a foreign agent, but it has challenged Moscow's use of foreign agent laws in the European Court of Human Rights. The organization has been fined millions of dollars by Russia.
In February, RFE/RL was outlawed in Russia as an undesirable organization.
The swift and secretive trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia's highly politicized legal system raised hopes for a possible prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington. Russia has previously signaled a possible exchange involving Gershkovich but said a verdict in his case must come first.
Arrests of Americans are increasingly common in Russia, with nine U.S. citizens known to be detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated over fighting in Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield has accused Moscow of treating "human beings as bargaining chips." She singled out Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, 53, a corporate security director from Michigan who's serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on spying charges that he and the U.S. government have always denied.
Gershkovich, 32, was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S.
He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will be counted as part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo Prison — a czarist-era lockup used during Josef Stalin's purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.
Gershkovich was the first U.S. journalist arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by Gershkovich's arrest, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden said after his conviction that Gershkovich "was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American."