The Wall Street Journal employee denies the allegations against him, as does his employer. However, he has been incarcerated for more than a year.
American journalist Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned for more than a year in Russia for espionage, will be tried in the city of Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, Russian authorities announced Thursday. No date is indicated for the opening of the trial.
He is accused of having “collected secret information” on orders from the CIA regarding Uralvagonzavod, a facility in the Sverdlovsk region that produces and repairs military equipment, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.
Officials have not provided any evidence to support these accusations.
Evan Gershkovich was arrested while reporting in Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and accused of spying for the United States. The journalist, his employer and the US government have denied the allegations.
Negotiations for a prisoner exchange?
Vladimir Putin has said he believes a deal could be reached to free Evan Gershkovich, hinting he would be willing to swap him for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany.
Asked last week by the Associated Press, the Russian president said that the United States “took vigorous measuress” to obtain his release but that such measures are the result of a “discreet, calm and professional approache”. “And they should certainly only be decided on the basis of reciprocity“, he added in an allusion to a possible exchange of prisoners.
Evan Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
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The first journalist arrested since the Cold War
Evan Gershkovich is the first American journalist arrested for espionage since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. His arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country had adopted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of expression after sending troops to Ukraine.
The son of Soviet emigrants who settled in New Jersey, Mr. Gershkovich spoke Russian fluently and settled in the country in 2017.
Since his arrest, Gershkovich has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, a notorious Tsarist-era prison used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement.
The Biden administration sought to negotiate his release but the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would only consider a prisoner exchange after his trial verdict.
U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who regularly visited Evan Gershkovich in prison and attended his hearings, called the charges against him “fiction” and declared that Russia “used American citizens as pawns to achieve political goals”.
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Since sending troops to Ukraine, Russian authorities have arrested several American nationals and other Westerners, which seems to support this idea.
