Russian authorities have indicated that the jailed American reporter Evan Gershkovich will soon stand trial in Ekaterinburg more than a year after his arrest on espionage charges that he, his employer, and the White House have decried as politically motivated.
Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison since last March in the highest-profile arrest of an American journalist in Russia since the cold war.
The details of the accusations have been kept secret. In a rare statement on the case, Russia’s general prosecutor said Gershkovich had been charged with collecting information about an arms factory that produced and repaired tanks and other armoured vehicles and military stock.
“Evan Gershkovich is facing a false and baseless charge,” the Wall Street Journal publisher, Almar Latour, and editor in chief, Emma Tucker, said in a statement. “Russia’s latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous. Evan has spent 441 days wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for simply doing his job. Evan is a journalist. The Russian regime’s smearing of Evan is repugnant, disgusting and based on calculated and transparent lies.”
“Evan’s case is an assault on free press,” the statement continued. “We continue to demand his immediate release. We had hoped to avoid this moment and now expect the US government to redouble efforts to get Evan released.”
The prosecutor provided no evidence for the accusations.
“The investigation established and documented that the American journalist of the Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich, on the instructions of the CIA in March 2023, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region about the activities of the defence enterprise … [at] Uralvagonzavod [industrial complex] for the production and repair of military equipment,” the prosecutor general’s office said. “The illegal actions were committed by Gershkovich in compliance with careful measures of secrecy.”
Gershkovich was arrested during a reporting trip in Ekaterinburg in March 2023. He was accredited by the Russian foreign ministry to work in the country. His arrest has provoked protests and vigils by colleagues around the world.
A spokesperson for Russia’s state prosecutor said an investigation by the security agency, the FSB, had been completed and the criminal case would be sent to the Sverdlovsk regional court, a precursor to the beginning of a criminal trial. It is expected that Gershkovich will be transferred from Moscow to the region before the trial begins. The maximum sentence is 25 years in prison.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, indicated in a recent interview with the US commenter Tucker Carlson that he was seeking to trade Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a high-ranking colonel in the FSB. Krasikov is serving a life sentence in a German jail for the 2019 murder of an opponent of the Russian regime in Tiergarten park in central Berlin.
“We are not closed to negotiations,” Putin said. “Moreover, these negotiations are under way, and there have been many cases when we agreed. We can come to an agreement now, but we just need to agree.”
The US has also said talks are ongoing to negotiate a prisoner exchange that could free Gershkovich. Previous trades have freed jailed Americans in exchange for high-profile Russian prisoners including the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“We’re encouraged to see Russia’s desire for a deal that brings Evan home, and we hope this will lead to his rapid release and return to his family and our newsroom,” the Journal said in response to Putin’s interview. “Evan is a journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Any portrayal to the contrary is total fiction … Evan was unjustly arrested and has been wrongfully detained by Russia for nearly a year for doing his job, and we continue to demand his immediate release.”