This Cursed Beautiful Land by Evan Gershkovich review – jailed in Putin’s Russia

The US reporter wrongly imprisoned for espionage writes compellingly about his ordeal Evan Gershkovich is the Wall Street Journal reporter who, in the early phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine, was snatched up by the Russian authorities on bogus espionage charges and spent a year and

The US reporter wrongly imprisoned for espionage writes compellingly about his ordeal Evan Gershkovich is the Wall Street Journal reporter who, in the early phase of Putin’s war in Ukraine, was snatched up by the Russian authorities on bogus espionage charges and spent a year and a half in Russian jails (first Lefortovo and then Yekaterinburg) before being released in a prisoner exchange in 2024. The opening section of his book about the experience is gripping and rather moving. He recounts his arrest in a sting operation, after meeting a contact who promised to supply him with information about Russia’s military-industrial preparations.

Born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in the US, Gershkovich grew up in suburban New Jersey on a diet of Soviet cartoons and “Krylov’s fables rather than Aesop’s”; he was betwixt and between. When he found his way into journalism in his early 20s – first working nights as an editorial assistant at the New York Times, then getting started properly as a reporter at the Moscow Times – he gravitated to Russia and fell in love with it. Continue reading...