From a story on niemanlab.org by Bill Kovarik headlined “Reporting isn’t espionage—but throughout history, journalists have been accused of being spies”:

The detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia on espionage charges marks an unusual throwback to the old Soviet tactics for handling foreign correspondents.

Authorities in Vladimir Putin’s Russia have increasingly used criminal charges against their own journalists as part of a “increasing crackdown on free and independent media,” as Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, has put it. But prosecutions of international journalists in Russia are still rare enough.