‘NOT LOSING HOPE’

Imprisoned WSJ Reporter Optimistic in First Letter From Russian Prison

Evan Gershkovich teased his mother over her cooking, writing, “Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich wrote his first letter home this week since being detained on charges of espionage, and he seems to be in remarkably good spirits for someone being held in a notorious Russian prison. “I want to say that I am not losing hope. I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good,” Gershkovich wrote in Russian to his Soviet émigré parents, according to The Wall Street Journal. Gershkovich even had it in him to tease his mother over her cooking, writing, “Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food,” though he also acknowledged that his family likely wants to smack him over the grief his arrest caused them. Both the Journal and the U.S. State Department have categorically denied the espionage allegations leveled against Gershkovich.