Russia’s top security agency says a reporter for the Wall Street Journal has been arrested on espionage charges.

(AP) — A Wall Street Journal reporter has been charged with espionage, according to Russia’s top security agency.

Evan Gershkovich was reportedly detained in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg while allegedly attempting to obtain classified information, according to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the top domestic security and counterintelligence agency that is the top successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB.

Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be arrested in Russia for espionage since the Cold War. His capture comes in the midst of the harsh strains among Moscow and Washington over the battling in Ukraine.

Gershkovich “was acting on the U.S. orders to collect information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex that constitutes a state secret,” according to the security service.

The FSB did not specify the time of the arrest. If Gershkovich is found guilty of espionage, he could spend up to 20 years in prison.

Gershkovich covers Russia and Ukraine as a reporter in the Money Road Diary’s Moscow department. The FSB noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry had granted him permission to work as a journalist.

His last report from Moscow, distributed recently, centered around the Russian economy’s log jam in the midst of Western authorizations forced when Russian soldiers entered Ukraine last year.