Ukraine live briefing: ‘Let him go,’ Biden says of U.S. reporter detained in Russia
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The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called on the Biden administration to expel Russia’s ambassador in Washington and Russian journalists in the United States after Moscow detained Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The board accused Russia of taking the U.S. citizen hostage on bogus espionage charges.
The White House has said the State Department has been in “direct touch with the Russian government” and is “actively working to secure consular access” to the 31-year-old journalist. “Let him go,” Biden told reporters outside the White House on Friday, directing the remark at Russia. In response to a question about the call to expel Russian diplomats, he said, “That’s not the plan right now.” Leading media and human rights organizations have said Gershkovich’s detention is unwarranted and unjust and called for his release.
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the anniversary of the recapture of Bucha, the town in the Kyiv suburbs where Russian forces are alleged to have committed atrocities against civilians before retreating. Ukrainian authorities exhumed a communal grave near Bucha this month as investigators work to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. “The United States supports Ukrainian and international efforts to document and investigate these atrocities,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in remarks on Bucha, delivered virtually.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
“Each case appeared to be the first of its kind since 1986, in the dying years of the Soviet Union,” Dixon and Abbakumova report. “Together, they conveyed a portrait of a ruthless wartime Russian government, desperate for leverage on the geopolitical stage and willing to stop at nothing to crush even trivial dissent at home.”
Natalia Abbakumova, Matt Bonesteel and Robyn Dixon contributed to this report.
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