JAKARTA - Russia's security service (FSB) announced on Thursday it had detained a reporter for the United States newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, on suspicion of spying for Washington.
The Wall Street Journal said the detention of US reporter Evan Gershkovich was based on false accusations.
This action is considered to exacerbate a bad relationship between Russia and the United States, which is Ukraine's biggest military supporter and has imposed sanctions on Moscow.
The FSB said in a statement it had opened a criminal case against Gershkovich on suspicion of espionage, accusing it of gathering classified information as a state secret about a military factory.
The FSB did not name the factory or say where it was located, but said it had detained the 31-year-old journalist in the city of Ural, Yekaterinburg, when he was trying to obtain classified information. They do not provide documentary or video evidence of his guilt.
"It has been determined that E. Gershkovich, who acted on an assignment from the American side, gathered classified information as state secrets about the activities of one of the companies in Russia's military industrial complex," the FSB said.
The Wall Street Journal said in a statement it was "deeply concerned" about Gershkovich's safety, "hardly denying allegations from the FSB and seeking the release of our trusted and dedicated reporter".
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said Gershkovich's activities at Yekaterinburg were "unlinked to journalism" and this is not the first time foreign journalism has been used as a cover for other activities.
Separately, the Kremlin said it knew Gershkovich had been caught red-handed. Meanwhile, other journalists working for US publications in Russia can keep working, provided they have the right credentials and do what is called "normal journalistic activity," the Kremlin said.
The US Embassy in Moscow did not comment immediately. A US diplomatic source said the embassy had not been notified of the incident, seeking information from Russian authorities regarding the case.
Russia has tightened censorship laws since sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24 last year in what it calls a "special military operation", and imposed prison sentences for those deemed "discredited" by the military.
Definitions about what is a state secret, particularly in the military field, have also been expanded.
"The problem is, the recently updated Russian law and the FSB's interpretation of current espionage, allowing the imprisonment of anyone who is only interested in military affairs," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Kremlin observer and founder of a political analysis firm, R.Politik.
"That is, (whose) writes about the war against Ukraine, private military companies, the state of the army, troop equipment with ammunition, tactics and military strategies," he explained.
Another foreign journalist covering in Russia expressed his support for Gershkovich online, saying he was a professional journalist, not a spy. New York-based Human Rights Watch called for his release.
Separately, the Russian Kommersant newspaper reported that Gershkovich would be taken to Moscow and detained at the Lefortovo prison, a pre-trial detention facility for the FSB.
Gershkovich, which has covered Russia since 2017, previously worked in The Moscow Times newspaper and the Agence-France Presse news agency before joining the Wall Street Journal bureau in Moscow in January last year.
In recent months, he has primarily covered Russian politics and conflict in Ukraine. His cell phone could not be reached on Thursday and, according to a Telegram messaging service, he last went online on Wednesday at 13.28 Moscow time.
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