Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / Evan Gershkovich - Why Imprisoning a Journalist Is a Bad Idea _ The Daily Show

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Evan Gershkovich - Why Imprisoning a Journalist Is a Bad Idea _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The book is phenomenal.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Beautiful writing. I'm telling you, there's an ancient axiom, an
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: old saw, if you will. I don't know why they
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: imprison journalists. Because you remember everything. When are they going
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to learn?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: You know, we'll see. Maybe if the book fails, we'll
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: be like, that's a good idea.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: No!
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: No!
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: When you were... You were working in Russia for many years.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Five and a half years at that point.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Five and a half years. Your family background is Russian. Yeah.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: And so you've always been drawn to this land. What
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: drew you to Russia in the first place with that?
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was working here in New York as
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: a reporter. Well, I guess as a news assistant, I
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: was trying to become a reporter.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: And Russia, I think, has drawn reporters for forever because
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: of how fascinating it is. Danger kind of partly it, right?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Things are always happening, developing, and so I was seeking
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: out reporting opportunities, and I had colleagues at the, I
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: was working at the New York Times, and colleagues were like,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: you speak Russian, you spoke Russian at home, you know,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: go take advantage of that, and there was an English
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: language outlet working back then in Russia called the Moscow Times.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: They needed a reporter, I went over there, and it
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: was incredibly fascinating when I got there, in 2017 that was.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: The writing that you have, I think we obviously have
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a caricature in this country about what Russia's like, in
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the way that I think you sort of anywhere you
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: live in middle America, they think of New York, but
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: you can't even walk. I was stabbed four times on the,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and then they get here and go like,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: it's just musicals. The way you write about Russia in 2017,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you don't feel necessarily the autocracy in the way this
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is pre-Ukraine invasion.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, not really, right? Crimea had happened. Eastern
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Ukraine had already happened. An opposition activist or politician called
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Boris Nemtsov had already been murdered. in the streets near
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the Kremlin for speaking out against the decision to forcibly
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: annex Crimea. But it's a kind of cosplay democracy at
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: that point. So it's not a democracy, obviously, but they're
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: trying to make it seem like it is. And so
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: they would allow, you know, Russian journalists were facing pressure,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: but they could work. So independent newsrooms still functioned. The
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: late opposition leader Alexei Navalny was still drumming up protests
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: when I arrived. That was kind of like the big
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: news story when I was there.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: At that time, as an American Russian journalist, did you
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: feel more in a protected bubble than maybe some of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: your Russian counterparts might have felt there? Did you feel
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: more protected?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So foreign journalists were treated as kind of
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: like quasi-diplomats at that point. Right. You know, like the Russian...
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: government was trying to censor information for its own people,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: for its own audience. But it wanted to project an
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: image of being a normal country. And so foreign journalists
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: help you do that. You write for the world, the
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: economy is doing fine, it's a normal place, like it's
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: a modern, Moscow's modern. And so the worst that could
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: happen then would have been your visa's not renewed.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And that's a three-month, you say in the book, like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: every three months you'd have to get your permit.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: It was a year then. And then when the full-scale
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: invasion happened in 2022, they limited people to three-month visas.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So at that point, only one reporter for the BBC
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: in 2021 had been kicked out. But then they changed
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the rules, so it's three months. And so we took
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: that as a signal, kind of like, you know, if
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: they don't like us being there anymore, they can let
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: these visas run out. Sort of the easy way of
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: handling it. Was that for you?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So now there's the full-scale invasion and they're doing these
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: three-month visas. In your mind, do you think, well, the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: worst that can happen is they'll boot me and I'll
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: go somewhere else?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: There was a really small percentage that we were considering
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: and thinking about. I mean, maybe more than a small percentage.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, some foreign newspapers closed their bureaus. The New
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: York Times shut its bureau down. Bloomberg News Agency did.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: We stayed. My bureau chief stayed in Russia and others did.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And then the New York Times went back. And part
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: of the thing that we were worried about was that
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Russia had passed these censorship laws, incredibly draconian. If you
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: called the war a war and not what they were
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: calling it a special military operation, you could go to
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: prison for 10 years. Very special, very short. Interesting.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So you're saying they just change the names of things
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: randomly and then penalize journalists if they don't go along
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Very easy.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: How weird. How weird. And obviously, look, I think it's
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: easy to be flippant about this country and maybe a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: certain authoritarian creep and all that. But it's also, I
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: don't mean to be glib about what you're actually facing there,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: which is really a different form of peril than here. Right.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: But, you know, since I've been home, my newspaper has
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: been sued and reporters have been called out in public.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: So it's not like it's super fun.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: It's not not happening.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: It's not not, you know. It was a little creep.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it was a very different situation then for
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: what we were going through. I mean, so after these
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: censorship laws are passed, the foreign ministry spokeswoman told the,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: you know, we were asking them, what can we actually report? Like,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: does this apply to us? Do the rules apply? And,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: you know, Russian journalists had fled the country. And she
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: said to us, you know, you call women men and
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: men women in the West, you can call this a
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: special military operation.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Are you... So they're literally just terminally on Twitter? Like,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: is that.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Seems like it. We're X now. Since I got back,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: it's X now. Apparently.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, now I'm not aware of that.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I missed that chance.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness. I've been deadnaming it all this time.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Is there... In Russia, how aware are they of our
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: cultural divisions... And how much is that? You know, you
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: do write in the book that people would say things
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: like Ukraine would have fallen if the United States was
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: not behind them and doing these various things. They do
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: seem to feel like we are playing a more intentional
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: role in keeping Russia down.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, I mean, if, you know,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the most of the information in that country, if not
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: at this point, like 99% is state-directed propaganda, and that's
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: the drumbeat, that's the information that's being basically projected on
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: the airwaves every single day. So it's what people are consuming,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: but I mean, it's also rooted in reality, right? Ukraine
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: is being buttressed and supported by the West. Ukraine wouldn't
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: be able to be fighting right now without it, so
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: it's a very direct link.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: The grains of truth that lead to.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Half-truths, basically, is how propaganda works, right? It has to
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: be something that resonates. Right.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And so in that environment, you are still reporting really
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: sensitive things and you're going to the front and you're
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: doing all these really dangerous things. And a gentleman approaches
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: you with what seems like a great story. Right.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: So I, you know, we were debating whether we should
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: be there or not. And, you know, nobody was getting
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: targeted with these censorship laws. I was even being followed
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: outwardly at points, including when I was reporting near the border.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And a couple of colleagues there from the New York
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Times and The Guardian were there with me. But it
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: felt like intimidation. So you're greeted when you arrive.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But you knew you were being watched. Yeah. You have two.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Cars following you. You have a security agent with a
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: phone with a flash on. And that kind of thing
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: has happened in other authoritarian countries before, like in China, too.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And the read that we had was that they're trying
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: to intimidate us, or at least our sources who we're
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: speaking to. At the end of 2022, Vladimir Putin addressed
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: his domestic intelligence agency, the FSB, and he told them
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: they need to catch a spy. Well, he said it,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: and the terms were, next year you need to do
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: a better job of catching traitors, foreign spies, and saboteurs.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Was that like a pep talk he gave at the FSB?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: He usually, so what he.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Does is he addresses them at the start of the year,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: during the year, you know, when the World Cup was
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: taking place in 2018, he told them that they needed
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: to catch more terrorists and extremists to make sure that
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: the party wasn't ruined. So they went about arresting teenagers
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: who were Antifa and anarchists.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: They have Antifa too?
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: They have Antifa too. They have TNT, the TV channel. What?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: They got a lot of things.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: They're just like us.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Just like us.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Except they eat more fish.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: And so it's sort of the normal, you know, he
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: gives them a signal that they go and do it. 2023,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I'm no longer followed outwardly. And that's a signal that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I clearly missed.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: You know, it seems to me like they were trying
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: to make me start, you know, start feeling comfortable.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Right. And they continue to give you that three month extension.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So right two days before I'm arrested, I
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: get my last extension done. for my visa and the accreditation,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the technical document you need to report in the country.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: And so Ukraine was saying that it was gonna be
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: doing this large counter offensive in the summer of 23.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: The West was saying the same thing and Russia was
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: preparing for it, but there wasn't that much reporting on
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: the subject. Right when Putin told his service to catch
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: a spy, it also reported a story about how he
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: was getting information from the front. making decisions about, you know,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: the war. So it seems like that wasn't, you know,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: maybe that was a signal for them about, you know,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: this guy's up to something perhaps too sensitive. Plus they
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: were looking for an American, as far as I can tell.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Because right around then, The Russians were telling the Americans
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: that Paul Whelan, who was arrested on espionage charges. Explain that.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So when you say they're looking for an American, it
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: is in some ways like the NBA. A little bit.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Matching trades.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So basically, they need a guy. They want to get
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a guy out of prison. So they've got to arrest
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: a guy that's also like at a mid-level exemption. and
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: they don't want to go over the second apron, so
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: they want to get a report, like that kind of thing.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, not to make it too cynical, but it's
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: kind of like that, because they have, so they have
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: a person who's in Germany. Yes. For murdering a person
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: in broad daylight. He works for the FSB. He's sent
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: there on assignment.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Yes. They have an assassin.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: They have an assassin. A state, you know, a state assassin.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: One of the more elite ones. He worked in the
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: alpha unit of the FSB. He was a bodyguard for Putin.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And Germany sentences him to life in prison. They have,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: you know, call him an asset, right? That's how they
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: look at these pawns or rooks or knights. And they
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: have Paul Whelan on espionage charges. And they're telling the
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Americans he won't leave Russia unless unless Vadim Krasikov leaves Germany.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Right. And they also have Navalny in their back pocket,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: who they can also use.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Could also use, potentially, yeah. So what they tell the
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Americans is, this is the trade. It's one for one.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Make it happen. And the Americans say, well, that's insane.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Germany's a third country, a sovereign country.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Not going to do that trade.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Lo and behold, they catch me. And they say, you know,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: it's a two for one, like you put it. So
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: then I think, you know, what they're looking for is
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: a big, high pro, you know, sort of target that
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: will cause a loud uproar.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Here, and it's also what you're saying, are they paying
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: attention to what's happening at home? Here, I think they are.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And there was, listen, the case was, rightfully so, international news.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: And it got everywhere. And it was a guy basically
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: just coming to you and saying, this is sensitive here.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So it seemed, you know, it was slightly more tricky.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You know, so I think we were attuned to cases like, here,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: take a flash drive. There might be something interesting on it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I had a colleague who was, he had covered the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Russian defense industry for years before the war started, or
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I mean the full-scale invasion. And he had left Russia. But,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: you know, all hands on deck. Biggest ground invasion in
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Europe since World War II. So he starts covering Ukraine,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: starts covering Russia, applies for a new visa to come
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: to Russia. They keep denying him. I'm in the country.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: And so he has this old source from a union
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: boss for factories in the Urals for about four years
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: or so. And so we start reporting this story and
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: talking to different sources. And he reaches out to that source.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: They had kept in touch during the war. And the
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: guy suggested he could meet. And... My colleague can't meet.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I can go meet. So I go to the first meeting. And, yeah,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: he suggests that he can help us, that he can
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: get some documents together. And that's really, you know, that's
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: the main signal that we missed. I mean, myself, but
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: us as a newsroom. And he said that it would
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: take him another, it would take him some time, basically.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And that was his second meeting.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Second meeting. At the second meeting, that's where I get arrested.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: And so my theory that I lay out in the
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: book is that, You know, the big man's told them,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: we've got to go catch a spy. They start looking
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: at their environment. There's a guy up to, you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: what we might call brave reporting. Maybe it's a little reckless.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: They don't like it. They need an American. Everything starts
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: fitting together. Plus, they have a way to lure me
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: into a trap. Lo and behold, they do. And then
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: I think the first meeting is a way to sell
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: it to him. Well, we got one. And then he
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: gives the green light to go ahead. Go get him
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: a second one. And then they can go say we
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: caught him red-handed. And the rest is what was in
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: the news.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: For 16 months. And you end up in this labyrinth
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: for 16 months of really intensely harsh sort of concentric
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: circles of hell that you're on a wider one, and
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: then you get further and further down into their system.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: But what I found so fascinating is the Russians seem
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to be very aware that they are all fatalistically role
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: players in a play that they are putting on. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you would say to them, you know I'm not a spy, right?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And they're like, well, what different? I mean, we're all just, eh.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's my favorite moment with the warden of
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: the first prison when he comes to check in on
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: me because they would check in on me before I
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: see the US ambassador. And he asks me how I'm doing.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: And I told him, actually, I'm kind of surprised that
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: you even, there's more care than I thought I would
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: even have. Like, I hurt my knee. exercising, prison nurse
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: checked it out, even gave me some exercise, and he goes, well,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: of course, we care about your health. I say to him, well, yeah,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, the package needs to be whole and undamaged,
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: otherwise the value's gonna go down to our trade analogy.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: And he checks his shoulder, he gets all grave, and
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: really quietly, he says, you know, I didn't tell you this,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: but yes. So it's like, you know, the big secret
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: has been revealed.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It's shockingly nonchalant.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: But it's also, I think it's important to get for
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: people who don't know Russia that well. It's very calculating.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So Victoria Roshan, a Ukrainian journalist around the same time
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: gets taken captive in Russian occupied part of Ukraine. Her
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: stay in the prison system is much different. She gets
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: killed and sent back in a body bag without her
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: body organs. So her family can't figure out what happened
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: to her. And so the Russians take me in this,
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: it's gonna be a loud case, it's a global uproar.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: They wanna say we have due process, we treat prisoners well.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Also they're taking a journalist He's probably going to write
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: about it if they let him go home. Right. And
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: so I think they want to create this, like you said,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: a play, a mirage. And so I you know, you're
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: talking about these circles of hell.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: It's also important to know I had, you know, they're
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: not fun conditions, but some of the best conditions and
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: people have it much worse.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Well, you're right about when they have Ukrainian prison and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: they're torturing them. Right. Right. And they're getting you end up.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Not in the first prison that you go to, but
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the second one, I guess, Central?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Central.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Central. And in that, it's sort of this almost dystopian,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Blade Runner-esque, everyone sleeps during the day, and then at night,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: the highways come alive and the ropes, and everyone is
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: communicating and sending contraband and communicating through the food system.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: The feeder. The feeder.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: The feeder.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: It's about the size of a human head. The window
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: that opens in the cell door.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of low. But in that prison, it
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: wasn't as... So I'm in two prisons, right? The first
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: one's very high security. The second one, you're sent.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You don't see anybody in the first one.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: At all.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: It's basically you and your roommate. And every now and again,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: you get to go for a walk in a very
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: small room.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: On the roof of the prison, there's just this netting
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: above you. And this is Lefortovo. Lefortovo in Moscow.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: It's pronounced Lefortova.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Correct. Or Lefortovo, maybe.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I think maybe that's it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It's French.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's right. And they have this really, I mean,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: it's crazy. It's a wild system of they move you
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: around the prison, snapping their fingers or clicking this kind
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: of metal snapper.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: To make sure you don't see anybody.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly, to notify each other that they're moving people around.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: And in the second prison, you're sent back to where
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: you ostensibly committed your crime for your trial, so sent
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: back to the rules. And it's much more open, and
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: the guards are a bit more loose. And so these feeders,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: where you get your food through or letters or whatever,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: they leave them open so there could be air because
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: it's the summer. And so every evening, we stick our
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: heads out onto the hallway and chat. And you kind
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: of lean down and stick your head through. How....
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: How long do you have to be in that prison
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: before you trust that putting your head through a slot
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: won't be the last thing you ever do in your life?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I guess you're really lonely. You want to chat? You know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: you start talking to yourself after a while when you're
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: in solitary.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you even say you didn't do it for a while.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: And when you finally poked your head through the feeder,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: they were all like, well, it's about time.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they were like, why weren't
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: you out here? I was like, well, I didn't know
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: how to do this in the last prison. You didn't
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: have this. It's not that obvious.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. For the reader of the book,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: this is an extraordinary journey. And you write about it
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: really with such great vivid detail and emotion and thoughtfulness.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: It really is a wonderful work. But I feel like
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you're just this dude that I'd be watching a Giants
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: game with.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I kind of am. Right, I am.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: But what is it when the ordinary meets the extraordinary
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: in these, how do you find within yourself the resilience
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: to overcome What is, you may think that it's not
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: as bad as a body bag with no organs. Right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: But it is objectively f * * * ing terrible.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, I got, you know, again, the luck
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: part of it or not the luck. It's sort of,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: you know, blessed with a few things. One, I was
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: working as a reporter for five and a half years.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: So when it happens and they don't immediately torture me
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: and subject me to the worst, you know, you immediately
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: take that as signals like, oh, it was a setup.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: And I set up for a specific reason.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And that means it's not going to be an espionage
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: case for, you know, 20 years. It's going to be.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: You did not fear you really were going to a gulag.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I really feared at the beginning when they arrest me
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: and put the hood over my head that they're going
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: to be torturing me. Right. Trying to get information if
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: they think I'm a spy. Maybe trying to have me,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: you know, tell on other people or whatever it is.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: And none of that happens.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: They just hand me my charges and then take me
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: to Moscow and they kind of, you know. treat me
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: generally well in the system. So I'd report stories where
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: somebody's sat on a chair, tied to it, electrocuted. I mean,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: that's not- They do that. They do that, right? And
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: so that doesn't happen to me, and so I have
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: this kind of relief. And then I also know how
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: these cases go. I know how long they take. There's
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: no surprises in the penal system. You know it's fixed.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, that's one thing. Two, you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I grew up in a Russian-speaking home, so I have Russian.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I can communicate with my cellmates, with the guards, the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: prison officials. Blessed with a sense of humor, luckily. That,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: I think, is pretty important.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Pretty immediately, you're tossing that out there. Although I imagine
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it can move into, when you're doing that, there might
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: have been moments where you thought, oh, not the time.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: No jokes, huh?
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Okay. I mean, but you also get in this habit.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's just natural that, you know, like,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: generally oppressed peoples are the funniest, but it's the way
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: to deal with the situation, right?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: It's hard.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: So you make a joke.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: It's just what you do. And so have the luck
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: of the draw there. And then because they were treating
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: me in a certain way, I had access to information
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: and have this great, incredible, you know, my newsroom backed me,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: my family backed me, my friends backed me.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And you're aware the whole time that you're not alone.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: One of the things I've seen in other countries is
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in sort of in Iran in particular, they arrest you,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: they put you in isolation and they want you to
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: feel that the world has forgotten.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: This was not the case.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Jason Rezaian, I think.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Jason Rezaian and Maziar Bahari, same. Exactly. Exactly.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And this was the opposite. I'm, you know, I get into,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: into my prison cell and I have a TV and
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: on state TV on the, you know, it's my second
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: night in prison on a news show on a panel.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: They say, you know, I think the quote, if I
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: remember correctly, it was like, you know, it might be
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: cynical to say, but we just replenished our exchange fund,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: they call it. That's what they call it in Russian.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: There's a term for it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: They said that publicly. And you have TV, you're watching
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: that on TV.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: And so, I mean, again, bless them. It gives me
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: a way to stay, you know, positive. You know, you
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: think this is going to end much sooner than the
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: term that you're actually going to receive.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Would you go back to Russia? You clearly loved it.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: You love the country. You love the people.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I'm of the people in a way. I grew up
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: in this kind of home. I met some of the
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: best friends I'll ever have there. I met my girlfriend there.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting place to live and work. Not while
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: he's alive or in power.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Do you see a future for Russia without Putin? Two-part question.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Future in Russia without Putin. What might that look like?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: In this country, are we being overly dramatic when we
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: talk about the clouds of authoritarianism gathering in this country?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I think the Russia one is really
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: complicated because these sorts of regimes kind of are, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Alexey Yurchuk, this Soviet historian, wrote one of the best
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: books about the Soviet Union called Everything Was Forever Until
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: It Was No More. And it felt like it was
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: forever and suddenly it collapses and disintegrates. And in retrospect,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: we try to connect the dots, but while you're living
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: through it, it feels like that's it. If he dies tomorrow,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine a less repressive Russia right now.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Global conflict, developing an authoritarian axis is kind of deepening
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: And in those kinds of conditions, for me, it's hard
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: to imagine a country just deciding, oh, we're going to
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: start reforming. We're just going to loosen things up, sort
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: of like the way when the Soviet Union collapsed.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And the disastrous effect of what they thought that was,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that we sort of tried to apply the purest form
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: of capitalism over a system that was not ready for it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Huge poverty, drug addiction broke the place. At the same time,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: you know, throughout Putin's years, there was, you know, Boris Nemtsov,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: there was Alexei Navalny. The system does also produce people who.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: But if the people don't know that, If the people
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that live there are getting a completely separate story, then
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I guess even if he goes, they wouldn't understand why
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: you'd reform it anyway, because it's all going great.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know if people actually think it's all going great.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: I think there's a sort, you know, it's really hard
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: to pull in an authoritarian system and also a system
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: where people are so scared that if, you know, I
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: met a guy in prison, read him out in the book,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: he was protesting the war by spray painting anti-war words
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: on a wall. of a government building, he got arrested.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: He's ended up in double digit sentence. He was a
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: 17 year old kid at the time. And so if
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: you're in a system like that and you think, you know,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: a pollster calls you.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Do they have pollsters?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: They have pollsters. They have independent pollsters.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, Putin just did, by the way, great in
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the midterms.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Fantastic. Just perfectly.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, his party, I think, captured 103% of all
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the available seats. And the second part is, now that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you're back here and you're feeling our country and you're
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: on the ground, Is there a sense of dread? Is
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: there a sense of impending danger in your mind? Because
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you are, boy at heart, that journalism is running through
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: your blood. So where do you see this going here?
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's this odd moment
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: at the end of the book when I start reporting
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: about how the swap came together, why I think I
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: got arrested, you know, trying to piece it all together.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And it's after the inauguration. And there's a sort of
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: chill on D.C. People are meeting far from their offices.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: They're talking in whispers, checking their shoulders, asking if I'm
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: on signal, which actually in the Russian system, they said,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the accusations of me being on
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: signal meant that I was using CIA tactics, even though
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: journalists use signals to protect their sources.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the tautology of reading your criminal report is kind
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: of amazing. It actually is.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It's amazing. That's all they have to do. But they
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: just say there's these three sentences. Yeah, I'll say it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: It's that, you know, the U.S. media is used by
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes according to an informed source.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: And then the Wall Street Journal's Moscow Bureau is used
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: by the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes according to informed source.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Evan Gershkovich belongs to the apparatus of the CIA.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: That's all you need, right? And so there's a kind of,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a fear, but I think direct comparisons
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: aren't Very useful. They're not apt. They're not always apt. But,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: you know, I think we can judge what's happening on
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: its own.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: You know, banning television channels from being in the pool
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: just because you want to doesn't seem like the, you know,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: the best way to uphold the First Amendment.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Because it is. There's a lot. And the corruption that
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: is now explicitly out in the open now is such
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a hallmark of.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, I just wrote about it a couple weeks
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: ago because I'm back to work at the Journal, and,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: you know, Trump's just opened or launching a Trump Tower
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: in Tbilisi that we wrote about. And that just feels
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: like now just sort of par for the course, you know,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: when I was moving to Russia.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Sure, they've got a Trump company, they work for the Pentagon, whatever,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it's all easy.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: But when I was moving to Russia 10 years ago,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: that was still, you know, we still had some sort
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: of outrage on that. But, you know, we published that story,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: and then the next day ProPublica blew us away with
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: the Donald Trump Jr. wedding, right? And it was just
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: There's a story after story after story, nonstop.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. When you're at work now, and one of
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: your colleagues is like, who took my peanut butter? Are
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: you like, I was in prison for 16 months.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I'm hungry.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Do you lord that over?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I grew up in a Russian immigrant home, so we
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: didn't have peanut butter. So I wouldn't take it. My
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: parents hated peanut butter.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: This coast, beautiful land. Phenomenal book. Evan Durst with us.