US authorities and the Wall Street Journal have denounced the trial as a sham.
A Russian court on Friday convicted American Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison after a speedy trial.
Evan Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. government have vehemently denied the charges. U.S. authorities and the Wall Street Journal have denounced the trial as a sham.
Evan Gershkovich, 32, was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and charged with spying for the United States.
He is the first American journalist arrested for espionage since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even as the country has adopted increasingly repressive free speech laws following its mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
