2023
April
14
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 14, 2023
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Linda Feldmann
Washington Bureau Chief

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been incarcerated in Russia for more than two weeks, and the outward appearance is grim. He’s been formally charged with espionage – an allegation both the Journal and U.S. government reject – and is reportedly in isolation 23 hours a day.

This week, the State Department designated Mr. Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” escalating his case to its office of hostage affairs. He could be in for a long haul.

But at least one thing has been going right: the ability of Journal editors and fellow journalists to keep Mr. Gershkovich’s plight in the public spotlight. This morning, the Journal posted a compelling video interview with his family – his Soviet Jewish émigré parents and his sister – that made one thing clear: This American-born reporter has an abiding love of his heritage and an adventurous spirit that led him to keep telling Russia’s story despite the risks.

“He loves the Russian people,” said Ella Milman, Mr. Gershkovich’s mother. “He said, ‘I’m just one of the few left there’” – referring to American journalists in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine – and felt it was his “duty” to stay.

Mr. Gershkovich wanted to convey the “nuance” and “beauty” of the country and its culture, despite Russia’s image in American media as a “terrifying, cold place,” his sister, Danielle, said.

A Russian prison monitor who visited the reporter told ABC News that he was “cheerful” and reading the novel “Life and Fate,” a Soviet-era classic about wartime society. Mr. Gershkovich’s friends speak of his sense of humor and fluent Russian as major assets.

His mother says the family remains hopeful: “It’s one of the American qualities that we absorbed – be optimistic, believe in happy ending, and that’s where we stand right now. But I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved. But that’s what I choose to believe.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Mahmoud Illean/AP
Orthodox Christian worshippers carry crosses during the Good Friday procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial, in Jerusalem's Old City, April 14, 2023.

Maintaining peace and harmony among Jerusalem’s diverse faith groups and communities requires sensitivity and balance. Church leaders say a culture of impunity has emboldened mostly outside agitators, and appeals to the Israeli government are being ignored.

Kevin Wurm/Reuters
A young child inside the Tennessee State Capitol holds a sign that supports stronger gun safety measures after a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, April 3, 2023.

Although Southern and Midwestern states have resisted changes to gun policies, they’re looking for ways forward that show they’re responding to the violence touching more and more Americans.

The Pentagon leak has put sharp focus on both the strength of U.S. alliances and the fragility of relationships that need constant tending – especially in an era of disinformation.

Photo Courtesy of Glasswing International
A coordinator at the Glasswing School leads a mindfulness exercise for students, in Guatemala. Mental health care is seen in Central American societies as key to healing wounds left by decades of civil war and gang violence.

Homicides have decreased across Central America in recent years, but healing society is about more than just reducing murders.

Sophie Hills/The Christian Science Monitor
Sean Young invited high school art students to paint one side of his Leavitt’s Country Bakery. The town of Conway, New Hampshire, cited Mr. Young for violating the sign ordinance, and a debate over public art and private property has ensued.

Where is the line between art and advertising? A New Hampshire bakery’s mural has inspired a debate among the residents of Conway about private property and public art.


The Monitor's View

Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War/Handout via REUTERS
Ukrainian prisoners of war react after a swap with Russian POWs April 10.

Russia and Ukraine rarely agree on much these days. Yet this week, after the release of two videos on social media that appeared to show Russian forces had beheaded three captured Ukrainian soldiers, the two countries seemed to find common moral ground. Each launched an investigation of the videos.

The Kremlin said they were “awful.” Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office promised to verify their authenticity and then “make an appropriate decision.” Ukraine called on the International Criminal Court to investigate and opened its own war crimes probe.

The gruesome nature of decapitation – a brutality associated more with terrorist groups – may account for Russia’s apparent concern. The videos could push Russian opinion against the war and further unite the Ukrainian people. Such reactions would reaffirm the modern legal norms that wars must have humanitarian limits and that combatants in a conflict must protect civilians, the wounded, and prisoners of war.

Both Ukraine and Russia are among nearly 200 countries that are party to the Third Geneva Convention, the international law that dictates rules on the treatment of POWs. Yet Russia has largely ignored many of the Geneva Conventions since the invasion, especially in bombing civilian targets, executing civilians in captured towns, and taking Ukrainian children to Russia. Ukraine has committed similar atrocities but not nearly as many. And more importantly, it is investigating them.

Shocking violence can sometimes change the course of a conflict. The My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers in 1968 shifted American opinion of the Vietnam War. In 2005, Al Qaeda told its branch in Iraq to stop its frequent beheadings. Videos of those acts were losing “Muslim hearts and minds,” said a leader of Al Qaeda. Many Islamic scholars also weighed in against such violence.

Beheadings during a war may be aimed at instilling fear, but they can also create a response that helps limit the war by affirming moral guardrails. That response is based on the presumed innocence and dignity of civilians or captured soldiers.

If the Kremlin does now seek to adhere to the rules of war, it would be a recognition that Russia must still exist within a moral community, one based on humanitarian law with the idea that what unites people is far stronger than what divides them. War needs limits because of the infinite good within humanity.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

God’s healing message of love and truth is always at hand – wherever we may be.


Viewfinder

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Visitors take in a vibrant floral display near the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, April 10, 2023, in Lancaster, California. The superbloom has transformed California's grasslands, parched after extended drought, into a dazzling array that has been captured from space by satellite images. While many happy pollinators – hummingbirds, bees, and the like – may move about the fields freely, conservationists are asking human visitors to navigate with care so as to protect the delicate flowers.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us. Please come back Monday, when we look at the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.

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