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American journalist Evan Gershkovich who has been held in Moscow prison for more than a year is to go on trial over espionage charges
American journalist Evan Gershkovich will go on trial in Russia on espionage charges, it was revealed yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal reporter, who has been held in a Moscow prison for more than a year, is accused of 'gathering secret information' from a Russian tank factory on behalf of the CIA.
Gershkovich, 32, will stand trial in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, where he was detained.
His case was filed to the Sverdlovsky Regional Court about 870 miles east of Moscow, according to Russia's Prosecutor General's Office.
US journalist Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, shapes a heart with his hands inside a defendants' cage
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, left, stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the First Appeals Court of General Jurisdiction in Moscow
Officials did not provide any evidence to back up the accusations and there was no word on when the trial would begin.
The White House has sought to negotiate his release, but Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider a prisoner swap only after a verdict in his trial.
Gershkovich was detained while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and accused of spying for the United States.
The reporter, his employer and the US government denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained.
'Russia's latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous,' according to a statement by Almar Latour, Dow Jones chief executive and publisher of the Journal, and Emma Tucker, the newspaper's editor in chief.
They added that the charges against Gershkovich were 'false and baseless'.
'The Russian regime's smearing of Evan is repugnant, disgusting and based on calculated and transparent lies. Journalism is not a crime. Evan's case is an assault on free press,' the statement said.
'We had hoped to avoid this moment and now expect the US government to redouble efforts to get Evan released.'
Uralvagonzavod, a state tank and railroad car factory in Nizhny Tagil, about 60 miles north of Yekaterinburg, became known in as a bedrock of support for President Vladimir Putin.
Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last March in Russia for 'espionage', will be tried in a court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg
The reporter, his employer and the US government denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained
The plant foreman appeared on Mr Putin's annual phone-in programme in December 2011 and denounced mass protests occurring in Moscow at the time as a threat to 'stability'.
A week later, Putin appointed the plant foreman to be his envoy in the region.
Putin has said he believed a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich, hinting he would be open to swapping him for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany, which appeared to be Vadim Krasikov.
He was serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.
Asked last week about Gershkovich, Putin said the US is 'taking energetic steps' to secure his release.
He told international news agencies in St Petersburg that any such releases were done through a 'discreet, calm and professional approach'.
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
He was the first US journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War.
The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich was fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times before joining the Journal in 2022.
Since his arrest, Gershkovich has been held at Moscow's Lefortovo Prison, a notorious tsarist-era prison used during Joseph Stalin's dictatorship.
US ambassador Lynne Tracy, who regularly visited Gershkovich in prison and attended his court hearings, has called the charges against him 'fiction'.