A Vilnius student’s story during the Ukrainian war and the prosecution of a Russian armed force: How she got out of her home and went to work

She knows they will be listening back in Moscow. She said that she is here because words are the worst weapon now.

Her social media posts were neither particularly strident nor unusual, she told CNN, reflecting those of so many other university students across the country. And that, she believes, is where her troubles started: when her fellow students denounced her to authorities in need of an example.

Now in Lithuania and on Moscow’s list of most wanted criminals, the softly spoken, slight 20-year-old from Russia’s northwestern Arkhangelsk region makes for an unlikely villain. But from the start, Russian authorities seemed to have singled her out for harsh punishment with particular zeal.

As the war in Ukrainian has stopped, Russia has become more liberal with its free speech and opposition. Days after Putin launched the full-scale invasion, his government adopted a law criminalizing the dissemination of what it called “deliberately false” information about the Russian armed forces, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. New laws were signed that made it easier for Putin to extend the rules for volunteers and mercenaries in the war in Ukrainian.

Those charges relate to an Instagram story she posted about the Crimean bridge blast last October, which also criticized Russia for invading Ukraine, and for making an allegedly critical repost of the war in a student chat on the Russian social network VK.

“I think they really regretted it. No one expected that the case would grow so much that the resonance would be so huge,” Krivtsova said of the Russian authorities. CNN reported in January on the charges she faced, and other international media outlets have also since covered her story.

The question is, are I happy to be here? From her cramped apartment on the outskirts of the capital, she asked. “I don’t know, there are two sides to a coin. I feel fortunate to be in Vilnius because they didn’t want me to be put in jail for speaking my mind.

She said she took off in the middle of the night and traveled for four days by car to the border. After her freedom, Krivtsova acknowledged that things are hard.

“I lost a lot and went through a lot,” she said, perched on one of the three rickety chairs that constitute the threadbare apartment furnishings. My mother is very emotional about the idea of my situation. I lost [left behind] my husband, grandfather, and grandmother. This is a huge price for anyone.”

Krivtsova explained that she was in desperate need of a vacuum cleaner, and that she was a quiet and earnest person. There is more to come at the start.

Having left with a backpack, she needs something more and needs to enroll at a new university. She was scared of being traced and left her old phone behind.

Before crossing the border, Krivtsova also ditched the electronic bracelet she had to wear around her ankle after she was placed under house arrest. Luckily for her, “its GPS, like so much other Russian hardware, didn’t function properly,” she said, with a mischievous smile.

She gained a lot as she crossed the border out of Russia. She felt a bit lighter at the thought of her freedom of speech.

“I have already created another Instagram channel, in which I continue to publish posts. I think it’s now my daily job to discredit the Russian army because the Russian army is committing crimes on the territory of Ukraine.”

But American journalists, in particular, have been concerned about a situation like the one now unfolding with Mr. Gershkovich: that Russian authorities might detain a correspondent from a U.S.-based organization amid the larger tensions between the two countries.

The Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., said in a statement that Mr. Gershkovich “is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government” and had been detained in Yekaterinburg, a city about 900 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains.

Hours later, the Kremlin endorsed Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest. The spokesman for the Russian president said that the man was caught red-handed. Mr Peskov could not give more information.

Mr. Gershkovich, 31, has worked for The Journal in Moscow since January 2022 and previously reported in Russia for Agence France-Presse and for The Moscow Times. He was employed as a news assistant for The New York Times.

No Western journalist has been tried on espionage charges in Russia in recent years. Foreign news organizations temporarily removed their correspondents from the country in March of 2022, after new laws in the country made it difficult for independent reporting after the invasion of Ukraine.

The correspondents had been accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry and had been able to operate freely.

Mr. Gershkovich was wearing a jacket hood over his head as he left the court building in Moscow. He pleaded not guilty to espionage charges, the Russian state news agency Tass reported.

The case for Brittney Griner’s release from the United States through a prisoner swap with a Russian sham dealer

The detention of Brittney Griner, an American W.N.B.A. star, on a minor drug charge in February 2022 set off a monthslong negotiation between Moscow and Washington for her release, culminating in a prisoner swap that freed a Russian arms dealer from U.S. custody.

American officials have sought the release of a former Marine who has been held in Russia since last year for what the US considers to be sham espionage charges. He asked if the White House considered his brother’s case a priority and whether he hoped the Biden administration “moves quickly and decisively” to get his brother released.

On Thursday, the Russian deputy foreign minister said that it was too early to discuss a swap for Mr. Gershkovich. According to Interfax, the Russian news agency, Mr. Ryabkov said that some exchanges took place in the past for people who were already serving sentences.

The Russian security services probably wanted to gain access to the Russian military, which Mr. Gershkovich had reported on, according to a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“I think that it will attract a lot of attention politically in the United States so that the authorities will have to react,” she said, adding that his arrest “puts the Kremlin in an advantageous position.”

The Kremlin was not planning to shut down The Journal’s Moscow bureau according to Mr. Peskov. “Those that are carrying out normal journalistic activity, if they have a valid accreditation, then of course they will continue to work,” he said.

Emma Tucker is the new top editor of the Journal. In 2014, as deputy editor of The Times of London, Ms. Tucker was closely involved in an episode involving two correspondents who had been kidnapped and detained in Syria. One journalist, Anthony Loyd, was shot twice in the leg, while the other, photographer Jack Hill, was beaten up by the mob before the men could escape.