MOSCOW — The Russian espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will begin on June 26 and will be held behind closed doors, the court hearing the case said Monday.
Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, has been jailed since his arrest in March 2023 and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The trial is scheduled to take place at the Sverdlovsky District Court in Russia’s fourth-largest city, Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested. Gershkovich has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, about 1,400 kilometers (900 miles) to the west.
The court said the trial would be held behind closed doors, as is common in espionage cases.
The prosecutor general’s office first announced the charges against Gershkovich, 32, last week, saying he was accused of “collecting secret information” on the orders of the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that manufactures and repairs military equipment.
The reporter, his employer and the U.S. government have denied the allegations. Washington found he was wrongfully detained..
Russia’s Federal Security Service claimed that Gershkovich was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets, but did not provide evidence to support the claim.
“Evan has done nothing wrong and should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last week. “The charges against him are false. The Russian government knows they are false. He should be released immediately.”
The Biden administration has sought to negotiate Gershkovich’s release, but the Russian Foreign Ministry has said it would only consider a prisoner exchange after a court verdict has been reached.
Uralvagonzavod, a state-owned tank and railcar factory in the city of Nizhny Tagil, about 100 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg, became known as a base of support for President Vladimir Putin in 2011-2012.
The plant’s director, Igor Khormansky, appeared on Putin’s annual phone-in show in December 2011 to denounce the mass protests then taking place in Moscow as a threat to “stability” and offer to travel to the Russian capital to help quell the unrest. A week later, Putin appointed Khormansky as his special envoy to the region.
Putin said a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich and suggested he would be willing to swap him for a Russian imprisoned in Germany.
it is Vadim KrasikovHe is serving a life sentence for the murder of a Chechen Georgian in Berlin in 2019.
Asked by The Associated Press about Gershkovich, Putin said the United States was “taking vigorous measures” to secure his release.
Speaking to international media at an economic forum in St. Petersburg in early June, he told such announcements would be “not decided through the mass media” but through a careful, calm and professional approach.
“And they should only be decided on the basis of reciprocity,” he added, alluding to the possibility of a prisoner exchange.
Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be detained on espionage charges since Nicholas Danilov in 1986 at the height of the Cold War. His arrest came as a shock to foreign journalists in Russia, even as Russia stepped up its crackdown on espionage. Repressive laws against free speech After sending troops to Ukraine.
Ars KurmashebaThe reporter for the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, has been jailed since October and awaiting trial for failing to register as a foreign agent while gathering intelligence on the Russian military.
The son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich is fluent in Russian and moved to New Jersey in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times and was hired by The Wall Street Journal in 2022.
U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who regularly visited Gershkovich in prison and attended his court hearings, said the charges against him were “fictitious” and that Russia was “using American citizens as pawns to achieve its political objectives.”
Separately, US Soldier Gordon Black Black is on trial in Vladivostok on charges of theft and making death threats following an altercation with a Russian woman. Black, who was based in South Korea but visiting the Pacific coast city, denied the death threat charge on Monday but “partially” admitted to the theft, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
