Antony Blinken urges Russia to release US journalist in call with Sergei Lavrov

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, called for Russia to free the detained American journalist Evan Gershkovich in a rare phone call with his Moscow counterpart since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Before his arrest, Gershkovich was reportedly working on a story about Wagner, the notionally private military group run by the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, which has done much of the fighting in Ukraine.

Media freedoms in Russia have been dramatically eroded since the full invasion of Ukraine in February last year, but the detention of Gershkovich marks a further downturn in an increasingly tense atmosphere.

No US journalist has been arrested and accused of spying by Moscow since the end of the cold war over three decades ago, and his capture is likely to prompt reappraisals by media organisations of the safety of reporters working in Russia.

Journalist friends of Gershkovich described him as a conscientious and diligent reporter. A Russian speaker, he had lived in Moscow for six years, working previously at Moscow Times and Agence France-Presse.

Russia has previously shown itself eager to trade Americans in its custody with its citizens held in the US. Last year, Russian authorities arrested the US basketball player Brittney Griner on drugs charges and sentenced her to nine years in prison. She was swapped in December for Viktor Bout, an arms dealer nicknamed the Merchant of Death, who had long been held in the US.