Russian security services announced Thursday the arrest of Ivan Gershkovich , a reporter for the American Wall Street Journal, on charges of espionage.

The FSB said in a statement carried by Russian agencies that it had "thwarted the illegal activity of the accredited correspondent of the Moscow office of the American Wall Street Journal, American citizen" Ivan Gershkovitch.

The security service stated that the journalist was suspected of "spying" for Washington and collecting information about a "company belonging to the Russian military-industrial complex".

Before starting his work in the American daily newspaper in 2022, Gershkovich was a correspondent for Agence France-Presse in Moscow, and before that a journalist for the English-language Moscow Times.

The journalist is of Russian origin and is fluent in the Russian language, at the age of 31, and his parents reside in the United States.