Russia’s FSB security service said on Thursday that a reporter with the U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal, Evan Gershkovich, had been detained in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion of espionage, the Interfax news agency reported.

In a statement quoted by Interfax, the FSB said it had “stopped the illegal activities of U.S. citizen Gershkovich Evan, born in 1991, a correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry, who is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government.”

No comment was immediately available from the newspaper.

The statement said Gershkovich had been tasked “by the American side” with gathering information on “the activities of one of the enterprises of the military-defense complex.” It provided no evidence. 
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