An American visiting Russia has allegedly been arrested for breaking a window at a children’s library after a night of drinking.
William Russel Nycum was reportedly visiting friends when he was placed under administrative arrest for 10 days on “petty hooliganism” charges after being found in the Moscow library.
“He got drunk, had a fight with his friends in a bar,” a source told REN TV reported.
“He said that he had been kidnapped, but he just left in a taxi. Then he broke the window at a children’s library, climbed inside and fell asleep,” the source said.
In March 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was arrested in Yekaterinburg, Russia for seeking classified information regarding Russian “state secret[s]” from a government official, according to a report from TASS.
Gershkovich, who formerly worked for The New York Times and The Moscow Times, was allegedly trying to obtain information on the “military-industrial complex of Yekaterinburg” and the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company involved in military operations in Ukraine.
Russia claims that Gershkovich was acting on behalf of the U.S. government and that his actions had nothing to do with journalism.
“What the employee of the American publication The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism,” said Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
