US journalist from Wall Street Journal is being held in Russia trends now US journalist from Wall Street Journal is being held in Russia after visiting there to write about the feared Wagner group Evan Gershkovich was working in Yekaterinburg He was taken out of a restaurant and put into a van, local reports said By Elena Salvoni and James Callery For Mailonline Published: 09:19 BST, 30 March 2023 | Updated: 09:19 BST, 30 March 2023 Viewcomments A US journalist has been detained in Russia, where he was reporting on the feared Wagner mercenary group which has been key to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was working in Yekaterinburg, was taken out of a restaurant and put into a van, local reports said early this morning. Colleagues of the journalist have said that he did not return from Yekaterinburg to Moscow and stopped communicating. His colleague Dmitry Kolezev said he had been covering attitudes to the war in the city as well as the notorious fighting group, private military company (PMC) Wagner. 'Evan traveled to Yekaterinburg to write about the attitude towards the war and the recruitment of local residents in the PMC Wagner,' he said in a post roughly translated from Russian. Eyewitnesses reported that people in civilian clothing took a man out of the Bukowski Grill restaurant on Karl Liebknecht Street, then put him into a minibus and took him away. It was not possible to examine the face of the detainee, as he was covered with a sweater collar. Sources confirmed to local publication It's My City that a journalist for The Wall Street Journal had been detained, but it is not clear for what reason. His work is believed to have made him a target as the Kremlin cracks down on dissent against the regime and the war being waged in Ukraine. Russia has been expelling foreign journalists from its territory since before the war began, but their detention in this manner is rare. Meanwhile, Russian journalists whose coverage has been seen as going against Putin's regime and the war have been beaten, detained and arrested. In September over two dozen journalists were arrested as they reported from protests against the Kremlin's military mobilization in Ukraine. The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group acknowledged on Wednesday that fighting for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut had inflicted severe damage on his own forces as well as the Ukrainian side. Bakhmut, a small eastern city that has for months been the target of a Russian offensive, has seen intense fighting and destruction in what has become the longest, bloodiest battle of the war. 'The battle for Bakhmut today has already practically destroyed the Ukrainian army, and unfortunately, it has also badly damaged the Wagner Private Military Company,' Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an audio message. Russian officials say their forces are still capturing ground in street-by-street fighting inside Bakhmut, but have so far failed to encircle it and force the Ukrainians to withdraw, as had seemed likely weeks ago. Share or comment on this article: All rights reserved for this news site (dailymail) and under his responsibility