‘For us, the hard part is that we could leave, and he couldn’t,’ says WSJ reporter’s mother
By Shelby Holliday, The Wall Street Journal
The judge was delivering crushing news, but Evan Gershkovich’s parents couldn’t stop smiling at their son, who stood in a metal cage before them.
Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich had traveled from Philadelphia to Moscow with the hope of laying eyes on their youngest child, the Wall Street Journal reporter who the U.S. says is being wrongfully detained in Russia.
After a tense wait outside the courtroom, their long journey paid off, and they were ushered inside for the close of pretrial proceedings this week.
“It meant so much to be able to see him, and for him to see us,” Milman, his mother, said in a phone call. “Any parent who loves their kid would travel to the end of the world to be with them for five minutes,” she said.
At the close of the proceedings, the court extended the reporter’s detention by three months after investigators requested more time before his trial. A 31-year-old American citizen, Gershkovich was detained during a reporting trip in March and has been held on an allegation of espionage that he, his family, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
The last time the journalist’s parents traveled to Russia was in 2018 to visit their son, who had just moved to Moscow to work as a journalist and cover the country he had grown to love. They themselves had left the Soviet Union in 1979 to settle in America, and he was eager to show them how much their homeland had changed, they said.
This time their reason for coming was the same—to spend some time, however fleeting, with their son.
“I have missed just talking to him and being able to see him,” the father said.
Evan’s parents said they dressed up for the occasion to show their son they are holding up under the pressure. Milman chose pearls, linen pants and a bracelet he had bought her during a trip to Thailand. On the center of her chartreuse sweater, she pinned a large “Free Evan” button that is commonly worn by the journalist’s colleagues.
Mikhail Gershkovich donned the same black suit he wore to last month’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where the family received a standing ovation. And in a show of solidarity with his son, he paired it with a checkered button-up shirt similar to the ones the younger Gershkovich frequently wore before he was detained.
“I think it’s very important that he’s heard from his friends that we are doing well, and it’s important for him to see us, that we look good,” Milman said, adding that they were encouraged by how well Evan looked, too. Though his skin is pale, she said, he was smiling and looked relaxed at the hearing.
No tears were shed, according to Milman, who said it was important to stay strong and positive. But as she left the courtroom, she caught a glimpse of Evan being taken away in handcuffs and felt as though a knife went through her.
“For us, the hard part is that we could leave, and he couldn’t,” she said.