Russia Threatens More Journalists After Biden Hostage Deal for WSJ Reporter

Three weeks after freeing Wall Street Journal report Evan Gershkovich in a hostage swap for dangerous Russian criminals held in the United States and Europe, Moscow is threatening to arrest a group of Washington Post journalists who crossed the border with Ukrainian troops to file a story on their incursion into Kursk.

Ukraine launched a surprising attack on Kursk on August 6 and has reportedly managed to hold a remarkable amount of territory against Russian counterattacks so far. One of Ukraine’s targets in Kursk was the town of Sudzha, the location of a strategic natural gas hub.

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The Ukrainians have retained control of Sudzha for 11 days as of Sunday, when Washington Post correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, photographer Ed Ram, and Ukrainian human rights activist Tetiana Burianova were escorted into the town by Ukrainian troops to write an article about the occupation.

The article described “unmistakable evidence” from Sudzha that “some citizens of Russia are living under Kyiv’s control and Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is really not going as planned.”

Many of Sudzha’s residents were camped on the grounds of a former school, surrounded by Ukrainian soldiers who provided them with food and water. The center of the small down was heavily damaged by explosive weapons.

The part of the report that probably annoyed Moscow was the insistence, by both the Washington Post team and the captive Russian citizens they interviewed, that Ukrainian forces were treating civilians fairly well.

One older gentleman asked if the Ukrainians would take him home with them when they pulled out of the city, so he could search for his daughter, who went missing during the Russian attack on Kharkiv. A group of women in Sudzha thanked Ukrainian forces for treating them kindly and said they were still unable to “wrap our heads” around the swift and sudden invasion.

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“Let Putin make an agreement with your Zelensky. We really want some kind of agreement, guys. You’ve come to us, thank you, you’re treating us very well. But you must understand, we want to return to our children, to go home, do you understand? We want things to be resolved in a good way,” one Russian woman said to the Ukrainian troops escorting the American newspaper team.

Ukrainian troops interviewed by the Washington Post were generally upbeat, although perpetually on guard for Russian snipers and drones. They left notes for each other to keep the facilities they were occupying. They even took time to care for Russian pets and farm animals.

Someone from the invasion force cheekily spray-painted the name of a popular Ukrainian grocery chain on the walls of a local food store. The Ukrainians marked the Russian side of the border with a white surrender flag decorated with a swastika, to mark Russia as a “Nazi state” – an inversion of the propaganda Russia often uses against Ukraine.

There was not much in the Washington Post report for the Russians to like, and they clearly did not like it. On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russian police are “studying the facts in connection with the actions of the American journalists.”

In a similar incident, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Italy’s ambassador to complain about four journalists from Italian state broadcaster RAI entering the Kursk region under Ukrainian military escort to file the first foreign media report on Ukraine’s capture of Sudzha last week.

RAI said on Saturday that the journalists who angered Moscow would “return temporarily to Italy, solely to ensure personal safety and security.”

“Journalism is not a crime. The Moscow authorities’ possibility of putting Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini on trial is unacceptable. Reporting is not done with prior authorizations,” two of Italy’s journalism unions said in a joint statement on the matter.