Alsu Kurmasheva is an American journalist with dual Russian citizenship. She works as an editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), an American government-funded broadcaster.

She is based in Prague with her husband and two children. Her husband said that she went to Kazan, her hometown, in May to visit her mother, who was ill. Alsu was detained in June at the Kazan airport. Her U.S. and Russian passports were confiscated and she was not allowed to leave Russia. As she waited for her passports to be returned to her, she was charged with failure to register as a foreign agent in October. This is a designation that Russia requires of any organization or individual that Russia believes to receive foreign funding. Russia uses this requirement to target journalists and others who speak out against the Kremlin.

Russia requires organizations and individuals to register if they receive foreign funding. Russia targets journalists and others who speak out against the government. Her employer claims it has done everything legally required in Russia. Alsu’s supporters said she is being held as a political prisoner.

On Friday, a Russian district court in Kazan extended her detention. Kazan is about 500 miles east of Moscow. She was ordered to remain in custody until February 5, 2024, as she awaits trial. Her lawyer is appealing the ruling.

Her detention is the second this year of a journalist holding American citizenship. Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Moscow, was detained while on a reporting trip earlier this year. He remains in jailed in a high-security prison in Moscow, charged with espionage. He awaits trial.

The arrests of these journalists and other Americans in Russia raise suspicions that the Kremlin sees U.S. citizens as assets who can be traded for high-value Russians held in custody in the West. They are held as leverage as prisoner swaps are negotiated. Alsu seems to be caught up in a kerfuffle between her employer and the Russian government. Last December, WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner was released in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms dealer. There are reports that a potential prisoner swap for Gershkovich is being discussed.

Under a 2012 Russian law, individuals and organizations receiving funding from abroad and engaged in loosely defined political activity must register as foreign agents. If not, they face prosecution. The law has been criticized by rights groups as a tool of suppression against dissent. If she is convicted, Alsu faces up to five years in prison.

She has been designated as a political prisoner by a Russian rights group.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Ms. Kurmasheva’s relatives denounced her detention, calling for her immediate release. On Thursday, Memorial, a Russian rights group, designated Ms. Kurmasheva as a political prisoner.

Speaking about the decision to extend her detention, Ms. Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, said that she was not a criminal.

“The ‘foreign agent’ charges against her are absurd and clearly politically motivated,” Mr. Butorin said in a post on the social network X. “She shouldn’t be in jail.”

Mr. Butorin called on the U.S. government to designate Ms. Kurmasheva as “wrongfully detained,” a status that would obligate American government agencies to work intensely to secure her release.

A Russian court has extended #Alsu’s detention for another two months. Today is Alsu’s seventh Friday in prison. She is not a criminal. She shouldn’t be in jail. As an American citizen Alsu must be granted consular access immediately. The “foreign agent” charges against her are… pic.twitter.com/RsIZrDZNqp

— Pavel Butorin (@PashaButorin) December 1, 2023

Gershkovich has been designated as “wrongfully detained” by the State Department.

Ms. Kurmasheva has been denied consular access. American diplomats are working on that. The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said that her case is different from other Americans in Russian custody. She holds Russian citizenship and that makes her situation different.

In another recent development out of Russia, a criminal case against prominent Russian-American writer and journalist Masha Gessen has been opened. Gessen is accused of spreading “false information” about the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Russian authorities have charged Gessen, a staff writer for the New Yorker who holds dual Russian and U.S. citizenship but lives in the United States, with spreading “knowingly false information” about atrocities committed by the Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

Gessen made the remarks in an interview with popular Russian YouTuber and journalist Yury Dud, in which they discussed a reporting trip to several Ukrainian cities to document potential war crimes in the first months of the war.

Soon after reports of horrendous killings and brutalization of civilians in Bucha emerged in March 2022, Russian authorities launched a false counternarrative claiming that all accounts and photographic and video evidence provided by Bucha residents, Ukrainian officials, and journalists were staged and fake.

“According to the information from the Russian General Staff, the information about the mass murder of civilians by the service members, accompanied by cases of looting, kidnappings, and torture in March of 2022 in the town of Bucha during the special military operation is not true,” the decree initiating the case states, according to a copy provided by Gessen to The Post.

The Russian-language television channel Rain first reported the details of Gessen’s case.

This crackdown on journalists who hold American citizenship is a result of Putin’s invasion into Ukraine. As the war continues, Putin is desperate to grab as much leverage against the United States as possible. Look for this trend to continue at least as long as the war lasts.