American journalist Evan Gershkovich will stand trial in Russia on charges of spying for the CIA, prosecutors introduced Thursday.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was once arrested in March 2023 on what many in the West believe trumped-up charges by way of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repressive executive.
President Joe Biden has many times known as on Putin to unlock Gershkovich, 32, who was once arrested whilst on a reporting shuttle in the Ural Mountains town of Yekaterinburg. Gershkovich, his employer and the U.S. executive have all vehemently denied the allegations.
After greater than a 12 months in pretrial detention, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office mentioned Thursday that Gershkovich’s case can be despatched to the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, in the town the place he was once arrested, for trial at an unspecified date.
The prosecutor’s workplace mentioned that Gershkovich’s indictment on espionage charges were finalized following an investigation by way of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.
It mentioned he had “acted on instructions from the CIA” and “collected secret information” concerning the producer Uralvagonzavod, a facility in the area that produces and maintenance army apparatus. It added that “illegal actions were carried out by Gershkovich in compliance with careful measures of secrecy.”
Russian government have offered no proof to improve their accusations, that have been published for the primary time in Thursday’s observation.
Gershkovich faces up to two decades in jail if convicted.
In a joint observation, Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker mentioned “we had hoped to avoid this moment.”
“Evan Gershkovich is facing a false and baseless charge,” it said. “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.”
Gershkovich’s arrest has been condemned by journalists and government officials across the West, who see it as emblematic of the war Putin has waged against freedom of speech both in Russia and abroad.
The U.S. has designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, with Ambassador Lynne Tracy saying at a hearing in March that “the accusations against Evan are categorically untrue.”
But Putin has signaled he believes a deal could be struck to free Gershkovich.
A possible exchange had been in the works that could have resulted in the release of Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan, and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, sources told NBC News in February.
The swap was not thought to be imminent when the death of Navalny in an Arctic penal colony was announced on Feb. 16., five sources told NBC News.
Gershkovich has been kept in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, which is known for its harsh conditions. His multiple appeals have been rejected in court, and a previous announcement said that his pretrial detention had been extended until at least June 30.
During these court appearances, Gershkovich often smiles and appears in good spirits. But his detention has weighed on his family.
“It has been hard,” his father, Mikhail Gershkovich, told NBC News in March to mark the anniversary of his arrest. “He spent all four seasons there, he spent his birthday and all the holidays. We want him home as soon as possible.”
His parents left the then-Soviet Union for the U.S. during the Cold War. He and his older sister grew up speaking Russian at home, and the family calls him “Vanya,” the diminutive for his Russian name, Ivan.
His interest in Russia motivated his decision to move there in 2017 to work as a journalist.
But everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, the family said. Like many other foreign reporters wary of Russia’s tightening grip on press freedom, Gershkovich moved abroad, albeit regularly returning for reporting trips.
Since his arrest, every other American Russian journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, has additionally been detained, at the side of a number of different U.S. nationals. The U.S. executive has mentioned this can be a planned technique by way of Putin to use them as geopolitical pawns.
