When Evan Gershkovich‘s mother, Ella Milman, finally reunited with her son after a year and a half apart, she ran in for a hug. And her son, so much taller than Ella, lifted her up into the air, hugging her tight. He then walked into the arms of his father, Mikhail Gershkovich, who gave him a firm, warm embrace.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal journalist, had a lot of reasons to hug his Jewish mother after walking off a U.S. plane at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. It was a hug of love, longing, celebration, victory, and gratitude. After all, Ella was instrumental in bringing her son home from a Russian prison, and that’s not hyperbole. They say there’s nothing a Jewish mom won’t do for her children, and in Milman’s case, that included becoming a seasoned reporter, media maven and a groundbreaking diplomat.
From the moment Milman found out that her son was arrested for espionage in Russia in late March of last year, she started working tirelessly and achieved impossible feats — all to get him safely out of prison and back home. She passed on secret messages to President Biden; she met with German diplomats; went on ABC and Fox News; withstood over four hours of questioning by her son’s Russian interrogator; traveled miles and miles; and now, she gets to reap the fruits of her hard labor.
Milman was born in Leningrad, the place known today as St. Petersburg. Her mother was a nurse who treated Holocaust survivors after the war. Ella and Mikhail came to the U.S. separately as Soviet refugees and met in New York. They set down roots in Princeton, New Jersey, where the two computer programmers raised their two kids in a home steeped with the Russian culture that they loved, including borscht and Russian children’s tales.
Her son made a career in the land she fled, making it to Russia as a reporter in 2017. And then, one day in March 2023, he stopped answering his messages his parents sent him. His editor, Liz Harris, told Ella and Mikhail that he was gone, and Ella right away started researching, reaching out, and unearthing any news that she could about her son.
A Wall Street Journal report about the negotiations behind Evan’s release, as part of a prisoner deal and after his conviction of espionage and being tried for 16 years in prison, show that a number of very determined individuals who were willing to try unorthodox measures helped get him back home as part of that deal, but Ella was especially central in that effort. She was so thorough in her effort to talk to anyone she could and document every source and connection that the legal team of the Wall Street Journal called her “Ella the Reporter,” keeping track of everything she did in a green reporter’s notebook. She tried talking to every American prisoner who has ever returned from a Russian jail, researched who could be part of a prisoner exchange deal, and she had a lot of chutzpah, too. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last April, she walked up to Biden, telling him he was the only one who could rescue her son. At the same dinner this year, she passed along a message that may have helped make the release possible, telling Biden: “Can you please call Chancellor Scholz?” referring to the German Chancellor who facilitated the unprecedented and historic prisoner exchange that enabled Evan’s release, allowing the release of Vadim Krasikov, in jail in Germany, as part of the exchange for Evan.
Beyond the feats of courage and tenacity that Milman accomplished, she was also instrumental in keeping her son in good spirits by sending him weekly letters. She wrote about all that their Jewish family had already survived, from wars to antisemitism, telling him she knew this was a challenge they would triumph over, too. And they joked, back and forth, a lot. About how the prison gruel reminded him of the food she gave him as a baby, about how the books he read were too depressing, about how he expected his prison sentence to be longer. In June, when she travelled to his hearing, he jested with her through the glass box he was confined to. When she was interrogated by the same man who spent hours asking her son questions at the Russian jail where he was held in solitary confinement, she smelled the waft of shchi, Russian cabbage soup she knew from her childhood — it was the meal her son ate every day.
Now Evan gets to go home, to his mother, and perhaps to the nostalgic home-cooked Russian food of his youth. In an interview with ABC a year ago, Milman was asked what she would do when he got back home. She merely said, “I just wouldn’t let him out anywhere for several days at least.” We hope the Gershkovich family gets to spend all the joyous time together that they deserve, and we’re so glad that Evan is finally back home.
