Russian court imposes fine on Wikipedia for article related to Ukraine invasion, state media reports

The family of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who the US State Department classifies as wrongly detained by Russia, have spoken out for the first time in an exclusive video interview with the newspaper.

WSJ reporter Shelby Holliday asked the journalist’s father, Mikhail, if the pair ever talked about what could happen to him as a journalist in Russia. Mikhail said “no” but said he trusted his son and his judgement.

“Of course, it makes things more difficult for me now. [Because] I feel I’ve failed in some way as a father,” he added.

Following Gershkovich’s detention on March 29, his mother Ella Milman, who left the Soviet Union for the United States in 1979, said she had a sixth sense that something had happened to him.

His sister Danielle spoke of how her parents, who emigrated from the Soviet Union separately but in the same year, raised her and Evan to have pride in where they came from.

She said she was “in awe of him” when reading about Russia through his reporting

Danielle noted that her and her brother are “so different. I’m a home body. He’s a thrill seeker, an adventure. I can’t even relate to him sometimes in the life he leads, as a reporter.

His parents told the WSJ he “loved having fun’ from an early age and was always very curious. His mother said he had “so many friends” and they saw Russia through his eyes, and it was “beautiful”.

The reporter began his role at the WSJ a month before the Russian invasion in Ukraine began in February last year. “He said that I’m one of the few left there, I know that he felt like it was his duty to report there,” his mother recalled.

“When we came to visit him in 2018, I said to him that this is the country that I left and this is the country that you love and he said, ‘what an interesting thought’,” she added.

His dad said he “couldn’t have stopped him” from going to Russia.

His sister said she hopes he’s writing in prison and she’s hoping he “can make friends” in there. She said seeing the publicity his case is getting is “strangely helpful for me” and as a family “they will do whatever it takes” to free him.

“It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed, be optimistic, believe in… happy ending. That’s where we stand right now. But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved, but that’s what I choose to believe,” his mother Ella concluded.

Some background: Gershkovich was detained last month by Russian authorities who accused him of spying, ratcheting up tensions between Russia and the US.

Gershkovich’s arrest marks the first time an American journalist has been detained on accusations by Moscow of spying since the Cold War.

Finland’s embassy in Moscow has alerted Russia’s Foreign Ministry after it received a delivery of three letters on Thursday, one discovered upon opening to contain white powder, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

An embassy statement obtained by RIA says “three letters were delivered to the Embassy of Finland in the Russian Federation, when opening the first of which a powder was found”.

The letters were handed over to Russian representatives, and the Finnish Embassy alerted Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the statement added.

Relations between Helsinki and Moscow are tense with Finland’s recent ascension to NATO.

CNN has reached out to the Finnish Embassy in Moscow for more details.

Russia has placed its Pacific naval fleet on high alert as part of spot drills aimed at assessing and improving its state of readiness, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced Friday.

“At 09:00 (Vladivostok time) today, Pacific Fleet was assembled by alarm in its full complement and began to be put on the highest degree of combat alert,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told a Ministry of Defense leadership conference, according to a statement.  

“As part of the event, the Pacific Fleet is to repel massive missile and aviation strikes, practice submarine search and destruction, complete torpedo and artillery fire drills and missile launches to defeat the warship strike groups and ground activities of a mock adversary,” Shoigu continued.

This comes after Russia’s Pacific Fleet press service said on Thursday morning warships from the Pacific Fleet conducted anti-submarine exercises in waters off the country’s far eastern coast.

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A Moscow court has fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Russian-language Wikipedia, for failure to remove an article about the “Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia region,” Russian state media TASS reported Thursday.

According to TASS, a Moscow court found the Wikimedia Foundation guilty of not removing information from its web page and fined it 2 million rubles ($24,500).

The court documents state that Wikipedia refused to remove an [article] about hostilities within the framework of the special military operation and Russia’s annexation of the Zaporizhzhia region, TASS reports.

There have been debates about banning Wikipedia in Russia. Asked about the possibility of shutting the website down, the Kremlin said last Tuesday that a Russian alternative to the Wikipedia platform needs to be developed first.

Russia needs its own equivalent of the online encyclopedia due to the Kremlin’s concerns about its “inaccuracies, distortions,” and “historical and factual errors” on Wikipedia, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

The Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has signaled a possible reduction in the number of American journalists working in Russia.

Talking about US-Russia relations on state TV Thursday, Antonov said Russia feels the growing pressure on its embassy and bilateral relations overall after its arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Antonov said he had a “very harsh” conversation with US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, during which the State Department accused Moscow of unlawfully detaining Gershkovich.

“The Americans threatened us with retaliatory measures if we did not release Gershkovich in the near future. Let’s see how they will act,” Antonov said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One. He added that this meeting had “no practical outcome.”

Antonov also noted that Russian journalists have faced unfavorable treatment in the US and pointed out that the number of American reporters working in Russia far exceeds the number of Russian reporters working in the US.

Some background: Gershkovich was last month detained by Russian authorities who accused him of spying, ratcheting up tensions between Russia and the US.

Gershkovich’s arrest marks the first time an American journalist has been detained on accusations by Moscow of spying since the Cold War, and the US State Department on Monday officially designated the Wall Street Journal reporter as wrongfully detained by Russia.

During a joint press conference in Beijing, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told her Chinese counterpart Qin Gang that China should exert influence on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, and said that unilateral change of the status quo over the Taiwan Strait by means of force is unacceptable. 

Baerbock said Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, clearly indicates that no country has bigger influence over Russia than China.    

Baerbock is on her maiden visit to China from Thursday to Saturday. 

On Taiwan: Baerbock also stated that destabilization of the Taiwan Strait would have terrible consequences for the global economy, and that Germany is concerned about the rising tensions over the Taiwan Strait.   

In response, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang reiterated Beijing’s position of promoting peace talks and not providing lethal and dual-use weapons to all relevant parties in the Ukraine war. 

Qin said, “Taiwan independence and peace cannot coexist together,” and added that “if a country says it respects the one China principle, it should resolutely oppose Taiwan independence.”    

Qin also called for cooperation and not competition between China and Germany. 

Some context: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there’s worry that China may one day treat Taiwan in the same way. China’s ruling Communist Party has never controlled Taiwan but claims the self-ruled island democracy as its own and has repeatedly refused to rule out taking it by force. Since the war in Ukraine, the European Union has taken a harsh stance against Russia and its close ally, China, as their military and trade relations run deep.

It will be “extremely difficult” for the European Union (EU) to “maintain a relationship of trust with China” if Beijing does not help search for a political solution to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Friday. 

The EU’s top diplomat had to postpone a trip to China this week after he tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a tweet he posted.

Borrell also called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to speak to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and “provide more substantial humanitarian aid to the battered Ukrainian people.” 

EU-China relationship: Borrell said relations between the EU and China “have deteriorated in recent years due to a growing number of irritants,” in particular China’s position on the war in Ukraine and EU sanctions against Chinese officials over the reported mass detention and persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. 

The ongoing trade “imbalance” between the EU and China was also addressed at length. The statement said the bloc’s total amount of our trade reached nearly 850 billion euros ($941 billion) in 2022, but Borrell noted that these exchanges were “increasingly unbalanced” at a disadvantage to the EU.

“Our trade deficit has reached a record of 400 billion euros ($443 billion), or 2.3% of our GDP… If imbalances are not corrected, we have to react,” the statement said. 

Thursday saw the arrest of a 21-year-old man in the high-profile case surrounding leaked US intelligence documents, including ones containing classified information on the war in Ukraine.

Here are some of the other major storylines out of Ukraine you need to know:

Ukrainian farmers trying to sow crops this season have faced “more difficult conditions than in 2022,” according to a policy official.

Denys Marchuk, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council Public Union, laid out the numerous challenges facing the country’s crop sowing campaign — which launched late last month — in a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

Short on money: Marchuk highlighted a lack of funding as a key reason why farmers are struggling to produce. Farmers have run out of supplies like mineral fertilizers, plant protection products and seed, and did not receive additional funding for 2023.

Russia left large areas unusable: Some 7 million hectares (more than 27,000 square miles) of farmland in Ukraine can’t be used during the sowing campaign, according to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy.

Apart from Russian-occupied territories, which are temporarily off the table, there are still mines that have not been removed across a lot of liberated land in Ukraine.

As CNN has previously reported, the country’s farmers face a stark choice: clear the fields of explosives to prepare for planting season or contemplate another year without income.

Making the most of available land: Despite all the challenges, Ukraine plans to sow crops on more than 19 million hectares of land (more than 73,000 square miles), according to the agrarian ministry.

Why a successful season is so important: Ukraine is regarded as a key breadbasket for much of the world, and the country relies on agriculture to generate more than 40% of total export revenues.

The country’s economy shrank by more than 30% in 2022 after Russia’s invasion destroyed infrastructure, hurt businesses and disrupted daily life, Kyiv’s Economic Ministry said in March.

The deputy chairman said farmers sold the grain group “mostly either at a loss or at their cost price,” saying this was a reason for the lack of free funds that could be used during this sowing campaign.