The Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg has begun the first hearing in the criminal espionage case against Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist for The Wall Street Journal.
The trial is being held in closed mode, so a few journalists were allowed into the courtroom only for protocol filming.
Evan Gershkovich was detained in the spring of 2023 in Yekaterinburg. Russian authorities accused him of espionage. According to the investigation, the journalist was commissioned by the CIA to gather information about Uralvagonzavod, which manufactures and repairs military equipment. The investigation claims that this information constitutes a state secret.
"Illegal actions were carried out by Gershkovich with observance of careful conspiracy measures," the agency claims.
Gershkovich does not admit guilt; he insists that he was only engaged in journalistic activities in Russia. Gershkovich claims that he wanted to communicate with employees of defense companies in Yekaterinburg or Nizhny Tagil for a journalistic text. His plans also included talking to the management of the Yeltsin Center, Sima-Land, and visiting the recruiting center of PMC Wagner. In Ekaterinburg, he had time to meet, in particular, with Vyacheslav Wegner, a deputy of the Sverdlovsk Legislative Assembly.
The US authorities, human rights and journalistic international organizations have repeatedly called on Moscow to release the journalist. The U.S. State Department has labeled Gershkovich as "wrongfully detained."
Several sources close to Russian and U.S. political circles said that Gershkovich could be held for exchange for any of the Russians in U.S. prisons. In December 2023, U.S. authorities said Russia had rejected an offer to release the journalist.
Gershkovich is not the only U.S. citizen behind bars in Russia. There are about a dozen of them at the moment. Washington accuses Moscow of using them as leverage in pushing for the release of Russians in U.S. prisons. This is one of the reasons why the United States has repeatedly urged its citizens to leave Russia since 2022.
