The closed-door trial of American journalist Evan Gershkovich began in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on Wednesday, 15 months after he was arrested and charged with espionage while on a reporting trip.
The case marks the first time since the Cold War that an American journalist has been put on trial for espionage in Russia. Gershkovich appeared calm in court Wednesday, smiling and nodding at colleagues who had traveled to Yekaterinburg — almost 900 miles to the east of Moscow — to report on the opening moments of the trial. Gershkovich’s head had been shaved, as is typical for prisoners in the Russian penitentiary system.
Russian prosecutors announced earlier this month that they had finalized an indictment and had “established and documented” that Gershkovich had “collected secret information” about the Uralvagonzavod military factory in the Sverdlovsk region in Russia while “on assignment from the CIA.”
While Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Gershkovich was caught “red-handed,” no evidence has ever been made public.
Gershkovich, the White House and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have deemed the charges baseless. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
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Gershkovich, 32, a U.S. citizen who had worked as an accredited journalist in Russia for six years, has been in pretrial detention at the Lefortovo prison in Moscow since his arrest in March 2023.
His case was transferred this month to a court in Yekaterinburg, where Gershkovich was initially arrested, and he was moved to a detention center in the city. As is typical for espionage cases in Russia, the trial will remain closed to the public and is expected to last several months.
Last year, the State Department declared Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested in 2018 on similar charges, to be wrongfully detained, a designation that commits the federal government to work for their release. The Kremlin has signaled that it is open to the possibility of trading Gershkovich for high-value Russian nationals jailed abroad once a verdict is delivered.
President Vladimir Putin told American right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson in February during his first interview with a Western media figure since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that “an agreement can be reached” with the United States to free Gershkovich. During the interview, Putin indicated that he wanted to secure the release of Vadim Krasikov, an alleged Russian intelligence agent convicted of the murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin in 2019.
When again pressed on the subject during an interview with international reporters in April, Putin said that U.S. and Russian authorities continued to “maintain contacts on this issue.”
“I know that the U.S. administration is taking energetic steps to secure his release. It’s true. Such issues are not decided by mass media, they prefer a discreet, calm and professional approach and dialogue between security services,” he said. “And they certainly should be decided on the basis of reciprocity.”
U.S. Embassy officials said that they were given brief access to Gershkovich ahead of the proceedings and were present at the court.
“Russian authorities have failed to provide any evidence supporting the charges against him, failed to justify his continued detention, and failed to explain why Evan’s work as a journalist constitutes a crime,” the embassy statement said after the hearing.
“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.”
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Peskov declined to comment on the trial and echoed Putin’s comments on potential prisoner swap negotiations.
“No, we can’t talk about any signals at the moment, we can only repeat that this topic likes silence,” he told reporters at a daily briefing. “We know that this topic is very high-profile in the United States, but it is not so high-profile inside our country. The investigation is underway, the trial is underway, and we must wait for the verdict to be delivered.”
In her own statement ahead of Wednesday’s trial, Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker described the case as “a travesty of justice that already has gone on for far too long.”
“When his case comes before a judge this week, it will not be a trial as we understand it, with a presumption of innocence and a search for the truth,” she wrote. “It will be held in secret. No evidence has been unveiled. And we already know the conclusion: 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. And an excellent job he was doing, at that.”
Gershkovich’s next hearing is set for Aug. 13.