German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called a Russian court’s ruling on Friday sentencing American reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison for alleged espionage “politically motivated.”
“Journalism is not a crime and the truth cannot be hidden,” Baerbock wrote on X.
She said the conviction showed that the Russian president Vladimir Putin “is afraid of the power of facts.” She called the sentence “part of Putin’s war propaganda.”
The Russian judiciary convicted Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, on espionage charges after a closed trial. Gershkovich, the newspaper and the U.S. government rejected the charges as having no factual basis.
