Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2023. American journalist Evan Gershkovich is sitting in a restaurant talking to a source.
They inform the American that he is being arrested by Russia's main intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
Known as the FSB, it's the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, where Russian President Vladimir Putin previously worked.
Gershkovich is now the first US journalist to be arrested in Russia since the Cold War. He is hooded and thrown in a van before the agents get to work.
"The hood gets ripped off at one point," Gershkovich told 7.30.
"There's operatives sitting next to me and a man across from me in a suit. He asks, 'Who do you work for?' I say the Wall Street Journal.
The question is repeated before Gershkovich arrives at a station and is charged with espionage.
The charge strikes fear into the foreign correspondent. He knows Russia under Putin has a reputation for doing whatever it takes to silence enemies of the state.
In 2018 former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were targeted in an assassination attempt with deadly nerve agent Novichok. They would ultimately survive the poisoning.
Former Putin opponent Alexei Navalny survived an attempt on his life undertaken with Novichok before his eventual death in February 2024, in one of Russia's…
