Joshua Yaffa writes about Evan Gershkovich’s release from Russian prison for The New Yorker

Joshua Yaffa, renowned journalist, and writer-in-residence and guest faculty member at Bard College Berlin, has written about journalist Evan Gershkovich’s release from Russian prison for The New Yorker. A personal friend of Yaffa, Gershkovich’s release on August 1, 2024 was part of a multinational prisoner exchange. Fifteen other prisoners were freed from Russia in the complex exchange, among them Bard and Smolny College alumna Sasha Skochilenko.

Yaffa writes of Gershkovich, “I met him shortly after he arrived in Moscow, in 2017… Not only did [his detention] represent a sharp break from decades of precedent, in which foreign correspondents occupied a relatively protected status in Russia, but I was left with the knowledge that a person I cared about deeply woke up in a cell in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison.”

Yaffa recounts that despite the isolation and psychological pressure that Lefortovo Prison is infamous for, the letters he received from Gershkovich reflected an impressive resolve to keep up his spirits. Yaffa writes, “He arrived in Russia with aspirations of becoming a foreign correspondent. He’s leaving as an example of dignity, bravery, and heroism. I look forward to telling him the same in person soon.”

Read the article in The New Yorker here.

Post Date: 08-05-2024