‘He’s an idiot.’ Evan Gershkovich says Putin spent more than an hour trying to convince a world leader that the WSJ reporter really was a spy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was convinced that American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was convicted in Russia on charges of spying under the guise of reporting, really was a spy. Gershkovich recounted Putin’s belief in an excerpt from his memoir published in The Wall Street Journal.