Evan Gershkovich’s friends were worried about him. “What are you doing?” his college roommate Simon Brooks asked him as they carpooled from New York City’s JFK Airport to a wedding in the Hamptons in the summer of 2022, months after Russia invaded Ukraine. “This is scary.” But to Gershkovich, reporting on Russia for the Wall Street Journal was a dream job—an opportunity to help Western readers understand the country where his parents were born.