Jailed US reporter Evan Gershkovich to be tried behind closed doors, says Russian court
Russia will hold the espionage trial of the detained American reporter Evan Gershkovich, who denies charges of collecting secrets for the CIA, behind closed doors later in June, a court in the city of Yekaterinburg has said.
Gershkovich, 32, was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on 29 March 2023 in a steak house in Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the cold war more than three decades ago, denies the charges.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, claimed Gershkovich was trying to collect secrets about Uralvagonzavod, a powerful Russian defence enterprise that is one of the world’s biggest battle tank producers.
“According to the investigation authorities, the American journalist of the Wall Street Journal, Gershkovich, on the instructions of the CIA, in March 2023, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region about the activities of the defence enterprise JSC NPK Uralvagonzavod for the production and repair of military equipment,” the Sverdlovsk regional court said on Monday.
“The process will take place behind closed doors.”
The first hearing is scheduled for 26 June, the court said.
Gershkovich’s arrest shocked many western news organisations. There are almost no US reporters in Russia, which is ranked by the state department as a hardship posting on a par with Freetown, Mogadishu, Damascus and Kabul.
Russia has said Gershkovich was caught “red-handed”.
President Vladimir Putin has said there has been contact with Washington about potentially swapping Gershkovich but that such negotiations should be held away from the media.
The White House has called the charges “ridiculous” and Joe Biden has said Gershkovich’s detention is “totally illegal”.
The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones say Gershkovich was simply doing his job in Russia and deny the espionage charges. Both have repeatedly demanded that Russia release him.
Uralvagonzavod, based in Nizhny Tagil, sits at the heart of the Urals region, where Russia conducts some of its most secret weapons production and research. It is part of Rostec, Russia’s vast defence corporation run by Putin ally Sergei Chemezov.
A fluent Russian-speaker born to Soviet émigrés and raised in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times, and subsequently worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse.
Gershkovich has appealed against his detention several times, appearing in the glass cages used for suspects in Russian courts. All of the appeals have been rejected.