Alsu Kurmasheva was detained after traveling to Russia in May 2023 to care for her elderly mother.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist, has been detained in Russia on spurious charges since October of last year. Her husband, Pavel Butorin, has not been able to meet with either President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken since Kurmasheva’s imprisonment began, and the State Department has not granted Kurmasheva official wrongful-detainee status, Butorin told National Review.
Kurmasheva traveled to Russia in May 2023 to care for her elderly mother. While waiting for her flight back to the United States in June, Russian authorities detained her and confiscated both her American and Russian passports, preventing her from being able to leave the country.
Before receiving her passports — and before being able to pay the fine the Russian government leveled against her for the charge of failing to register her American passport — Kurmasheva received another criminal charge and was promptly detained, this time for her supposed failure to self-register as a “foreign agent.”
The Russian government did not stop there. It launched a third investigation against Kurmasheva for the alleged crime of distributing “false information” about the Russian military, a crime that effectively renders all reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine illegal.
Butorin said he appreciates President Biden’s comments at the White House correspondents’ dinner calling for the release of his wife and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, but he doesn’t believe his wife’s case is receiving enough attention at the highest levels.
“Biden’s office has declined all our requests for a meeting, and so has Antony Blinken’s,” Butorin told NR. “Unfortunately, Secretary Blinken has not been able to meet with me or with my children. I did appreciate a few meetings that I’ve had with other high-ranking officials at the State Department, including [Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs] James O’Brien and the people at Consular Affairs. But I need this case to be elevated to a higher level so that Alsu feels the support of the government and so that my children — future voters — also understand that they have the government’s support.”
The Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, signed into law in late 2020, details the criteria necessary for an American taken prisoner abroad to be considered “wrongfully detained.” Those criteria include such characteristics as the individual “being detained solely of substantially because he or she is a United States national”; the individual having been “detained in a country where the Department of State has determined in its annual human rights reports that the judicial system is not independent or impartial, is susceptible to corruption, or is incapable of rendering just verdicts”; and a situation in which “independent nongovernmental organizations or journalists have raised legitimate questions about the innocence of the detained individual.”
All those criteria, and more in the Act, apply to Kurmasheva’s case. Significant numbers of American lawmakers agree, with two separate congressional letters addressed to Blinken — one spearheaded by Washington, D.C., non-voting delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.) and Representative Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) and another by Representatives Tom Kean Jr. (R., N.J.) and Bill Keating (D., Mass.) — including arguments to that effect. Fifteen different organizations focused on freedom of the press have called for the Biden administration to grant Kurmasheva wrongful-detainee status as well.
A State Department spokesperson told National Review that Kurmasheva’s detention in Russia is a priority and that U.S. officials are in contact with her legal team. The spokesperson also said the department condemns “the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress and punish journalists” and described the charges against Kurmasheva as “another sign of the weakness of Putin’s regime.”
However, the spokesperson would not say exactly why Kurmasheva has not been granted wrongful-detainee status.
“The Department of State continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful,” the spokesperson told NR. “When making assessments, the Department conducts a legal, fact-based review that looks at the totality of the circumstances for each case individually.”
Despite Butorin’s best efforts, the State Department has not budged, and Butorin has not been allowed to meet with either Biden or Blinken to discuss his wife’s imprisonment.
“We’ve been very active in trying to put pressure on the State Department and the Biden administration to have Alsu designated as wrongfully detained,” Butorin told NR. “While I understand that the designation alone will not bring her back, we still think that it’s an essential part of the strategy so the case is dealt with by the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, and not just by Consular Affairs at the State Department.”
Butorin said the State Department has argued that granting Kurmasheva wrongful-detainee status may do more harm than good, and while Biden has spoken out about her imprisonment, as well as that of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, administration officials have told Butorin that, even after eight months of detention, Kurmasheva’s case is still under review.
Gershkovich, whose case has received significant media attention thanks to his perch at the Journal, received wrongful-detainee status after less than a month in Russian captivity. He was officially indicted on espionage charges on Thursday after more than a year in Russian prison. Russian authorities have not yet announced when his trial will begin.
Meanwhile, the State Department determined that WNBA player Brittney Griner had been wrongfully detained three months into her time in Russian custody.
“We are told that the State Department is still assessing whether or not this designation will harm or help Alsu’s situation. They haven’t been able to tell us specifically how they think it would harm her. They’re perhaps concerned about the price rising,” Butorin told NR. “I don’t like thinking about Alsu like a bargaining chip, but I understand that assigning a certain status to Alsu may come with an elevated price. I resent this kind of language, but this is what’s happening. And I’ll tell you this: Whether or not that designation harms or helps a detainee is not one of the criteria in the Levinson Act.”
Butorin told NR that, rather than a bargaining chip, he would like the Biden administration — and Biden himself specifically — to understand the human cost.
“I want him to see my children: Bibi, who is 15 and turning 16 in July, and Miriam, who’s turning 13 in August. I want him to see the suffering that our family has been forced to grapple with for more than a year now, because Alsu’s been stuck in Russia for more than a year now,” Butorin said. “We appreciate that he called on the Russian government to release her, but I need more than words. I need action.”
As one might expect, Butorin said, his wife’s time in a Russian prison has taken an emotional toll on him and his daughters. While he is able to communicate with Kurmasheva through letters that receive heavy scrutiny from her captors, phone calls and visitors have not been allowed, something Butorin believes “the Russians are specifically and intentionally doing that as a pressure tactic.”
“I know that I’m supposed to put on a brave face, but I’m not going to lie. It’s been hard. I’m doing the best I can as a single father, but I can’t possibly replace the maternal bond between the mother and the children,” he told NR. “I am blessed to have very strong and resilient girls — young women. They have very supportive friends and their school has been great. But it’s been very tough. They’ve had to grow up awfully quickly over the past year.”
Ultimately, Butorin told NR, he would like the government of the United States — a country where citizens “place a higher value on human life than any totalitarian regime” — to grapple with the people whose lives have forever been changed by Putin’s arbitrary imprisonments.
“Think about their families and the prisoners,” he said. “Just picture it for a second. That’s an image that I have all day long, every day. Just think about the human experience of that trauma rather than our relations with Russia, China, Syria, or some other country like that.”
And, he said, think about what his daughters, Bibi and Miriam, have endured.
“No one grows up wanting to become the child of a political prisoner,” Butorin told NR.