Russia Sentences Alsu Kurmasheva, American Editor, to a Penal Colony
A court in Russia said on Monday that it had convicted a Russian American editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an American broadcaster funded by the United States government, to six and a half years in a penal colony for spreading false information about the Russian Army.
The conviction of the editor, Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, took place on Friday and was first reported by The Associated Press. Also on Friday, a different Russian court sentenced Evan Gershkovich, 32, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, to 16 years in a higher-security penal colony on espionage charges that he, his employer and the American government have denied.
A court in Kazan, a major Russian city 500 miles east of Moscow, heard the case against Ms. Kurmasheva rapidly and behind closed doors, a process similar to that of Mr. Gershkovich’s case. There were only two hearings before Judge Ilfir Z. Salikhov read his ruling on Friday, according to court records. It took the court less than 10 days to process the case, the records showed.
The quick convictions of Ms. Kurmasheva and Mr. Gershkovich have raised the prospect that the government in Moscow might be preparing for a possible prisoner swap with Washington. Russian officials have said that discreet talks are being conducted with the United States about Mr. Gershkovich but that any prisoner swap would come only after a verdict.
In May, President Biden called on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release Ms. Kurmasheva and Mr. Gershkovich and said that the American government was doing everything to bring them home, along with other captives in Russia.
Ms. Kurmasheva was convicted of “spreading false information about the Russian Army,” a charge that Russian law enforcement has used to silence critics of the invasion of Ukraine. Natalia Loseva, a spokeswoman for the court, said she could not provide further details about the case because it was classified.
Stephen Capus, the president and chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, called the conviction a “mockery of justice.”
“It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family,” Mr. Capus said in a statement.
After the conviction, Pavel Butorin, Ms. Kurmasheva’s husband, said in a post on X that “Alsu has done nothing wrong” and that he and their daughters “need her home.”
Ms. Kurmasheva, who holds Russian and American citizenship, was detained last October in Kazan, her native city, for failing to register as a “foreign agent” and was put in a pretrial detention. In December, she was charged with spreading false information about the Russian Army. The charges were related to a book Ms. Kurmasheva edited after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “No to War,” which featured stories of 40 Russians who opposed the invasion.
Before her arrest in Russia, Ms. Kurmasheva lived in Prague for more than two decades with her husband and two daughters. In May 2023, she traveled to Kazan to take care of her ailing mother. About two weeks later, while trying to fly back, she was temporarily detained and charged with failing to notify the Russian authorities formally of her American citizenship.
Her American and Russian passports were confiscated. In October, a court fined her over that charge, but one week later she was detained again, this time under the “foreign agents” accusation.
Ms. Kurmasheva is one of several American citizens who have been detained in Russia in recent years. The detentions of Americans have raised fears that the Kremlin is seeking to use them as bargaining chips to be exchanged for Russians held in the West.
Other Americans who are captive in Russia include Paul Whelan, a Marine veteran, and Marc Fogel, a teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, who was sentenced in 2022 to 14 years in a penal colony for drug smuggling.
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