One year ago Danielle Gershkovich got a call from her mother. She could hardly believe the news.

Her younger brother, Evan, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, had just been arrested: he was the first US journalist in Russia since the Cold War to be charged with espionage. The maximum possible punishment: 20 years in prison.

“It’s been a really difficult year,” Danielle tells me by video call from Washington. “The uncertainty is very hard to deal with.”

Writing letters helps. The jailed American journalist has been sending plenty from prison.

“The best way to support one another is to keep things light,” Danielle says. “We have a lot of sibling banter back and forth, a lot of teasing with love.

“I recently asked him if it’s OK for me see the Dune movie, the sequel. I felt guilty about seeing it, because he can’t.

Evan’s ordeal began one thousand miles from Moscow in the city of Yekaterinburg. On a reporting trip there, he was detained by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service. The Russian authorities say the American was “caught red-handed” with “classified information”. He, his employer and the US authorities fiercely deny the spying charge.

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