PR expert who met with jailed WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich before his arrest released from prison

Yaroslav Shirshikov, a public relations expert who met with jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich shortly before the latter’s arrest and was himself arrested several weeks later, has been released on his own recognizance, according to the Yekaterinburg news outlet It’s My City.

Shirshikov was one of the first people to raise public concerns over Gershkovich’s disappearance in the hours before Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced his arrest. The PR expert himself was arrested in late April on charges of “justifying terrorism,” reportedly in response to a Telegram post.

In March, Shirshikov accompanied Evan Gershkovich on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg. He later reported that the journalist was working on a story about the views of Urals residents regarding the war in Ukraine.