Mr. Ambassador Alexei Paramonov, we take the opportunity of your recent appointment to wish you a fruitful and good job in Italy.
We write to you, as did our authoritative European and American colleagues to the diplomatic representatives of the Russian Federation in Washington and Paris, to express all our deep concern and our bewilderment, at the arrest and indictment in Moscow by Evan Gershkovich, reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
On behalf of the Italian journalists who work for our mastheads and deeming that we are the interpreters of a widespread sentiment in the country’s public opinion, we want to express our firm condemnation of this decision and we intend to add our voice to those who are asking that Gershkovich be released immediately.
Gershkovich is an esteemed and serious professional. Despite his young age, he has a long career as a journalist, with several years spent in Russia.
The story of Evan Gershkovich, the American reporter who loved Russia. And he was betrayed by that country
Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw
Foreign correspondents have been working in Russia since before the Revolution and by exercising the right and duty of reporting they have helped to tell the central role that your country has always had in Europe and in the world. This essential channel of dialogue and confrontation risks disappearing if the Russian authorities confirm the choices that led to Gershkovich’s arrest.
We ask that the matter be resolved quickly with recourse to reasonableness and the principles of freedom of expression and thought. We entrust our wishes to this letter and we trust in a positive response from it.
Massimo Giannini
Luciano Fontana
Claudius Cerasa
Massimo Martinelli
Maurice Molinari
Agnese Pini
War Ukraine Russia, the latest news today 10 April