Russia sentences dual-citizen American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva to prison for reporting on Ukraine war

A Russian court sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist with the U.S. government-funded radio station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was accused of spreading false information about the Russian army and sentenced to six and a half years in prison after a secret trial, court documents and officials said Monday.

The verdict in the city of Kazan was handed down 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 the U.S. said was politically motivated. The U.S. government has called Gershkovich wrongfully detained by Russia, a distinction the State Department did not make in the Kurmasheva case.

Kurmasheva, a 47-year-old editor of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service, was found guilty of “spreading false information” about the military, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan. Court spokeswoman Natalya Loseva confirmed to the Associated Press by phone that Kurmasheva was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison in a classified case. Details of the charges against her were not available.

When asked about the verdict on Monday, Stephen Capus, president and CEO of RFE/RL, called Kurmasheva’s trial and conviction a “mockery of justice.”

“The only just outcome is that Alsu be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” he said in a statement. “It is high time that this American citizen, our dear colleague, be reunited with her loving family.”

When asked about her during a press conference on July 16, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller repeated to reporters the general statement that “journalism is not a crime” and that the U.S. government had “pressed Russia for her speedy release.”

Miller said he could not provide “any new information regarding a finding of unlawful detention.”

The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), known by its French acronym, has launched a petition calling on the US government to classify Kurmasheva’s detention as unlawful.

“The fact that she was targeted was undoubtedly the result of her journalistic work,” the group’s campaign website states. The group is calling for a decision that it believes “could mobilize all state resources to achieve her release.”

Kurmasheva, who holds dual US 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 gathering intelligence on the Russian military. She was later also charged with spreading “false information” about the Russian military under a law that de facto criminalizes any public statement about the war in Ukraine that deviates from the Kremlin’s line.

Kurmasheva was stopped at Kazan International Airport in June 2023 after traveling to Russia the previous month to visit her sick 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 of that year.

Speaking to CBS News earlier this year, the reporter’s 15-year-old daughter, Bibi Butorin, said the family understood that Kurmasheva’s trip to Russia was risky, “but she only wanted to go for two weeks because of my sick grandmother.”

“My mom is definitely my biggest inspiration,” Bibi said. “And I miss her more than I can express. And I’m so worried about her safety.”

Kurmasheva is listed as the editor of a book that tells stories of people opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I know this book is a problem; it’s in her file,” Pavel Butorin, Kurmasheva’s husband, told CBS News. “These stories are not seditious, not criminal. There are no calls for violence in the book. They are just opinions – not even Alsu’s opinions. But as a journalist, she certainly has the right to collect and publish opinions.”

RFE/RL has repeatedly called for her release.

RFE/RL was asked by Russian authorities to register as a foreign agent in 2017. However, the organization has challenged Moscow’s application of the agent law before the European Court of Human Rights, and Russia has fined the organization millions of euros.

In February, RFE/RL was banned in Russia as an undesirable organization.

The quick and secret trials of Kurmasheva and Gershkovich in Russia’s highly politicized justice system raised hopes of a possible prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington. Russia had previously hinted at a possible exchange of Gershkovich, but said a verdict in his case must first be reached.

Arrests of Americans are becoming increasingly common in Russia, with nine US citizens reportedly being detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated due to fighting in Ukraine.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow of treating “people as bargaining chips.” She named Gershkovich and the former US Marine Paul Whelan53, a corporate security director from Michigan who is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted on espionage charges that he and the U.S. government have always denied.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29, 2023, during a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Authorities claimed, without providing evidence, that he was collecting secret information for the United States.

He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will count toward his sentence. Most of it was spent in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison – a Tsarist-era prison used during Joseph Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for trial.

Gershkovich was the first U.S. journalist to be 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 free speech laws after sending troops to Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden said after his conviction that Gershkovich was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American”.