Authorities in Russia on Wednesday arrested a U.S.-Russian journalist working for the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the broadcaster said.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Czech Republic-based editor with RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, traveled to Russia for a family emergency in May, the outlet said in a statement. It said that Kurmasheva was temporarily detained as she tried to leave the country in June, with authorities confiscating both her U.S. and Russian passports.
She was later fined for failing to register her American passport with Russian authorities, RFE/RL said, and she was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was charged with failure to register as a foreign agent on Wednesday. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment.
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“Alsu is a highly respected colleague, devoted wife, and dedicated mother to two children,” said RFE/RL acting President Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin. “She needs to be released so she can return to her family immediately.”
Kurmasheva’s arrest comes after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March during a reporting trip to Russia. The U.S. citizen remains in pretrial detention on espionage charges. Both the Journal and the U.S. government have strongly denied the allegations against Gershkovich, with the Biden administration formally declaring him wrongfully detained.
Kurmasheva was detained in Kazan, a city in southwest Russia, which is also the capital of Tatarstan. Kurmasheva’s reporting work focused on ethnic minorities in the region and Bashkortostan further to the east. The Tatar-Bashkir service which she edited has regularly covered the war in Ukraine and has reported on repressive tactics used by Russian authorities.
State news agency Tatar-Inform said authorities accuse Kurmasheva of “collecting military information about Russian activities via the Internet in order to transmit information to foreign sources” in September 2022. A source told the outlet that investigators believe she received “information about teachers from one of the universities in Tatarstan who were mobilized into the army” and prepared “alternative analytical materials” for “relevant international authorities and conducting information campaigns discrediting Russia.”
The outlet also published a video purportedly showing Kurmasheva being escorted into a building by four men wearing facial coverings. It said that she is being held “in a temporary detention center” and may yet face another criminal case for “publishing a book that portrays Russia’s special operation in Ukraine in a negative light.”
A representative from human rights outlet OVD-Info told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) nonprofit that the article of Russia’s criminal code under which Kurmasheva has been charged has not been used before.
The CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said described the allegations against Kurmasheva as “spurious” and called for her to be released immediately. “Journalism is not a crime and Kurmasheva’s detention is yet more proof that Russia is determined to stifle independent reporting,” Said said in a statement.
RFE/RL has previously been subjected to harrassment from Russian authorities. In August 2022, the homes of several of the broadcaster’s journalists were raided and law enforcement questioned the contributors about the work of the Tatar-Bashkir Service.
