Russian authorities announced that American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned for more than a year on espionage charges, will face trial in Yekaterinburg, located in the Ural Mountains, where he was initially detained.
The case against The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been formally charged with espionage, has been submitted to the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in a city approximately 1,400 kilometers east of Moscow. However, the trial date remains undisclosed.
Evan Gershkovich, aged 32, stands accused of collecting classified information at the behest of the CIA regarding Uralvagonzavod—a facility in the Sverdlovsk region involved in military equipment production and repair. This statement from the Prosecutor General’s office marks the first public disclosure of the specific charges against him.
In March 2023, Evan Gershkovich was apprehended during a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg and charged with espionage on behalf of the United States. Despite the allegations, both the journalist’s employer and the U.S. government refuted the claims, asserting that he was unjustly detained.
Following Gershkovich’s arrest, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that he had been following U.S. directives to gather classified information. However, no supporting evidence was presented for these allegations.
Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesperson, strongly criticized the situation, asserting that the charges held no credibility whatsoever. Furthermore, he emphasized that the U.S. government remains committed to securing Gershkovich’s return.
“Evan has done nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” Miller said. “The charges against him are false. And the Russian government knows that they’re false. He should be released immediately.”
The Biden administration has attempted to negotiate his release, yet Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated that Moscow would only contemplate a prisoner exchange post the trial’s verdict.
“Russia’s latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous,” a statement by Almar Latour, Dow Jones CEO and publisher of the Journal, and Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor in chief, said.
They further asserted that the accusations against Gershkovich were unfounded and lacked merit.
The Russian government’s attempt to tarnish Evan’s reputation is reprehensible, vile, and built upon deliberate and obvious falsehoods. Journalism should never be treated as a criminal act. Evan’s situation represents an attack on press freedom,” the statement asserted. “While we had hoped to avoid this situation, we now anticipate increased efforts from the U.S. government to secure Evan’s release.
Roger Carstens, the Biden administration’s special presidential envoy and top hostage negotiator, expressed his initial optimism about reaching an agreement to bring Gershkovich back home before this juncture, emphasizing that the recent development does not impede their progress.
“The bottom line is, this was not unexpected,” he said.
During 2011-12, Uralvagonzavod, a state-owned tank and railroad car factory located approximately 100 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg in Nizhny Tagil, gained recognition as a strong supporter of President Vladimir Putin.
During Putin’s annual phone-in program in December 2011, plant foreman Igor Kholmanskih condemned the ongoing mass protests in Moscow as a destabilizing force. He suggested that he and his coworkers should journey to the capital to quell the unrest. Subsequently, a week later, Putin assigned Kholmanskikh to be his representative in the region.
Putin has expressed confidence in the possibility of striking a deal for Gershkovich’s release, indicating his willingness to consider an exchange involving a Russian national currently incarcerated in Germany. This individual is suspected to be Vadim Krasikov, serving a life sentence for the 2019 murder of a Georgian citizen of Chechen heritage in Berlin.
Last week, when questioned by The Associated Press about Gershkovich, Putin stated that the U.S. was actively working to secure his release. He emphasized that decisions regarding such matters are not made through mass media channels but rather through a discreet, calm, and professional approach.
“And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity,” he added in an allusion to a potential prisoner swap.
If found guilty, Gershkovich could be imprisoned for up to two decades. Notably, he is the first American journalist detained on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 during the Cold War. The arrest of Gershkovich surprised foreign journalists in Russia, despite the country’s tightening restrictions on freedom of speech following its military actions in Ukraine.
Gershkovich, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union and settled in New Jersey, possessed fluency in Russian. He relocated to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times and later joined The Journal in 2022.
Following his arrest, Gershkovich has been incarcerated at Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison—a notorious facility with a dark history dating back to Josef Stalin’s purges, during which executions took place in its basement.
Lynne Tracy, the U.S. Ambassador who frequently visited Gershkovich in prison and observed his court proceedings, denounced the accusations against him as fabricated. She asserted that Russia is exploiting American citizens as tools to fulfill political objectives.
Following the deployment of troops to Ukraine, Russian authorities have apprehended multiple U.S. citizens and individuals from Western countries, seemingly reinforcing this notion.
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