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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has appeared in a Russian court to stand trial in a secret proceeding on charges of espionage amid US efforts to secure his release in a prisoner exchange.
Video footage published by state media showed Gershkovich standing in a glass cage at a district court in Ekaterinburg, a city in Russia’s defence-industrial heartland in the Ural Mountains, ahead of the hearing on Wednesday.
Gershkovich faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison if he is found guilty of espionage.
Officials have not provided any evidence of Gershkovich’s alleged guilt, despite the Kremlin’s claim to have caught him “red-handed,” or given any information on the scope and duration of his trial.
US officials are negotiating with Russia for a potential prisoner swap involving Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a US marine veteran jailed for 16 years on similar charges in 2020, in exchange for Russians held in the west.
The US embassy in Moscow on Wednesday said Gershkovich “has done nothing wrong and never should have been arrested. His case is not about evidence, procedural norms or the rule of law. It is about the Kremlin using American citizens to achieve its political objectives.
“Russia should stop using individuals like Evan Gershkovich or Paul Whelan as bargaining chips. They should both be released immediately.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said the Kremlin is open to an exchange involving Gershkovich through a “quiet, calm professional approach and dialogue between the secret services”.
Prosecutors claimed Gershkovich was in Ekaterinburg on an assignment for the CIA to obtain “secret information” about production and repair efforts at Uralvagonzavod, a large tank factory, when he was arrested in March 2023.
The WSJ vehemently denies the charges against Gershkovich, while the US has declared that he has been wrongfully detained.
Emma Tucker, the WSJ’s editor in chief, said the proceedings would “not be a trial as we understand it, with a presumption of innocence and a search for the truth”, in a letter to readers published on Wednesday.
“We already know the conclusion,” she added. “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job.”
Gershkovich is one of several journalists arrested in Russia after Putin promptly banned all dissent following his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
They include Alsu Kurmasheva, a US-Russian dual national journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was arrested while visiting family last year. She faces up to 10 years in prison on charges of not registering as a “foreign agent” and “disseminating false information” about Russia’s armed forces, which she denies.
Gershkovich’s probable conviction is likely to be a prelude to a potential prisoner swap that could involve other US citizens jailed in Russia.
The US has previously swapped high-profile Russian prisoners for Americans in Russian custody, including arms dealer Viktor Bout who was traded for US basketball star Brittney Griner following her sentencing on drug charges in 2022.
Putin strongly hinted in February that he was demanding in exchange the release of Vadim Krasikov, a hitman sentenced to life in prison in Germany in 2021.
Efforts to swap Krasikov for Gershkovich, Whelan and jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, however, collapsed when the dissident died in a remote Arctic penal colony months later.
Navalny’s supporters have accused Putin of murdering him to scupper the deal. Putin said in March he had agreed to an informal proposal to release Navalny on the condition that he never returned to Russia but denied any involvement in his “tragic” death.
People briefed on the talks say the Russian president is fixated on releasing Krasikov, who murdered a former Chechen militant in broad daylight in a Berlin park in 2019.
Russia has jailed several more Americans in recent months, including Gordon Black, a US soldier who was arrested on theft charges while visiting his girlfriend in the eastern city of Vladivostok in May and sentenced to nearly four years in prison last week.
Ksenia Khavana, a US-Russian dual national, went on trial last week in Ekaterinburg on treason charges for sending a pro-Ukrainian group $51.80 on the first day of Moscow’s invasion. Judge Andrei Mineyev, who is also overseeing Gershkovich’s case, ordered proceedings to be held in secret in that trial too.
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