Moscow, Russia:

The Kremlin said Monday that it would not grant an interview with President Vladimir Putin to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was released by Russia this summer in a prisoner swap.

Gershkovich made a hand-written request to interview Putin while filling out a form requesting a presidential pardon ahead of the prisoner exchange, the Journal reported.

“So far we are not interested in such an interview. For there to be an interview with foreign media and some specific one, we need to have an occasion,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“So far we don’t see such an occasion,” he said.

Gershkovich was one of 16 people freed by Russia in August’s landmark prisoner swap with the West.

The 32-year-old spent more than 16 months in Russian detention on espionage charges that he, his employer and the White House denounced as false.

The Kremlin has repeatedly rebuffed calls for a Western journalist to question Putin, granting only one such interview, to the controversial US talk show host Tucker Carlson in February.

Gershkovich, a respected Moscow correspondent, was arrested on a reporting trip in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow, Russia:

Russia and the West have released a total of 24 prisoners in the biggest exchange since the end of the Cold War, officials said on Thursday.

Here’s a snapshot of who has been released:

Freed by Russia

Russia has freed 16 people — US and German citizens, journalists and domestic dissidents:

Evan Gershkovich:

The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter became the first Western journalist to be jailed in Russia for espionage since the Soviet era. He was sentenced to 16 years in a strict penal colony by a Russian court on July 19, after a fast-track trial.

Russia says that he spied on a tank factory in the Urals region and was working for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but presented no evidence to support its claims, which were dismissed as bogus by the White House and his employer.

Born in the US state of New Jersey to Soviet Jewish emigres he carried on visiting Russia even after dozens of other Western journalists left following Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.

Paul Whelan:

The former US Marine Whelan, 54, who also has British, Irish and Canadian nationalities, has been jailed in Russia since December 2018.

In June 2020 he was sentenced to 16 years in a remote Russian penal colony for espionage.

He was detained in a Moscow hotel in 2018 — allegedly with a cache of classified documents, when he was the security director of a US automotive parts manufacturer.

Alsu Kurmasheva:

US-Russian journalist Kurmasheva, 47, was sentenced to six years and six months on the same day as Gershkovich in an ultra-secret trial, details of which did not emerge until days later.

An editor with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty outlet, she was accused of violating Russia’s strict military censorship laws and arrested while travelling to Russia from her home in Prague to see her sick mother.

Vladimir Kara-Murza:

Fierce Kremlin critic and journalist Kara-Murza, 42, was in April 2023 handed a 25-year term for condemning Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine, one of the longest prison terms ever handed down to a Putin critic.

A dual British-Russian national, he was arrested in April 2022 after a speech in the United States where he accused Russia of “war crimes” against Ukraine.

Several investigative media outlets, including Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel, have backed his claim that he was poisoned by security services under orders from the Kremlin — attacks which left him with nerve damage.

In May he won a Pulitzer Prize “for passionate columns written at great person risk from his prison cell.”

Oleg Orlov:

Veteran rights advocate Orlov, 71, was handed a two-and-a-half-year term in February after calling Russia a “fascist” state and criticising its Ukraine campaign.

A biologist by training Orlov was an instrumental figure in Memorial, the Nobel Prize winning human rights organisation disbanded by Russia in late 2021. Under his guidance, Memorial preserved the memory of victims of communist repression and campaigned against rights abuses in modern Russia.

Lilia Chanysheva:

Chanysheva, 42, who once headed late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s offices in the central Bashkortostan republic, was sentenced to seven and a half years’ prison in June 2023 for having created an “extremist organisation”, a sentence that was later toughened to nine and a half years in April.

An accountant, she had worked for major companies including Deloitte before joining Navalny’s team in 2017, openly protesting corruption in the region.

Ksenia Fadeyeva:

In December 2023 Fadeyeva, 32, who led Navalny’s now-banned organisation in the Siberian city of Tomsk, was sentenced to nine years in prison for “extremism”.

Fadeyeva headed Navalny’s political office in Tomsk, where the opposition leader was poisoned in August 2020 on a visit ahead of elections.

Fadeyeva was elected to the Tomsk city legislature in 2020, a move hailed as a victory for the Russian opposition against President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Ilya Yashin:

Russian liberal opposition politician Yashin, 41, was handed eight and a half years in late 2022 for denouncing Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.

A former ally of Navalny and assassinated opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, he was imprisoned for having denounced “murders of civilians” in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

Alexandra Skochilenko:

Artist Skochilenko, 33, from Saint Petersburg, was arrested in April 2022 and then jailed in November 2023 for seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with messages opposing the Ukraine offensive.

She in particular focused on the bloody battle for the Black Sea port city of Mariupol.

Andrei Pivovarov:

Russian opposition activist Pivovarov, 42, headed the Open Russia foundation, bankrolled by former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who himself spent a decade in prison for campaigning against Putin.

He was arrested in 2021, hauled off a plane by FSB agents before he could leave the country, and sentenced to four years for collaborating with an “undesirable” organisation.

Rico Krieger:

German citizen Rico Krieger, a 30-year-old medic, was pardoned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 30 after being sentenced to the death penalty on June 24.

Convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a secretive trial, he was suspected of photographing military sites in Belarus in October 2023 and placing an explosive device on a railway line near Minsk under Ukrainian orders.

According to a LinkedIn profile Krieger, worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.

Dieter Voronin:

Joint Russian-German citizen Voronin was sentenced to 13 years in prison on “treason” charges after Moscow alleged he received classified military information from another journalist, Ivan Safronov, who remains behind bars.

Kevin Lick:

Lick, who was arrested aged 17 and is another joint Russian-German citizen, became the youngest person ever convicted of treason in Russia when he was sentenced in 2023 to four years for allegedly sending photos of a Russian military facility visible from his apartment window to German security services.

Patrick Schoebel:

German citizen Schoebel, in his late 30s, was arrested earlier this year at Saint Petersburg airport after customs officials found cannabis gummy bears in his luggage.

German Moyzhes:

Moyzhes, a Russian-German migration lawyer, was facing treason charges after he was arrested in Saint Petersburg in May, according to Russian state media.

Almost no details of the case against him had been made public. Moyzhes was well known in Saint Petersburg as an urban activist and pro-cycle campaigner.

Vadim Ostanin:

The former head of another of Navalny’s regional branches, Ostanin was sentenced in 2023 to nine years in prison for participating in an “extremist” organisation.

Freed by the West

The United States, Germany, Slovenia, Poland and Norway freed a total of eight people as part of the deal, including alleged spies, hitmen and hackers.

Vadim Krasikov:

Krasikov, an alleged FSB hitman, was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for gunning down a former Chechen separatist in a Berlin Park in 2019.

German judges said the murder was ordered by the Russian state, and the Bellingcat investigative media outlet has linked Krasikov to a secret elite unit of Russia’s FSB state security services.

Through his lawyer, Krasikov claimed he had been misidentified and was a Russian construction engineer. Earlier this year Putin, without naming him specifically, said he wanted a Russian “patriot” who had “eliminated a bandit” in a “European capital” freed from prison.

Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva:

Slovenia sentenced Dultsev and Dultseva, both 40, to more than a year and half in prison for “spying and falsifying documents.”

The pair, alleged Russian secret agents, were living undercover on Argentine passports in the capital Ljubljana, where authorities said they ran an art gallery as part of their cover.

Mikhail Mikushin:

Mikushin, born in 1978, was arrested in Norway in 2022 and accused of posing as a Brazilian researcher at a university in Tromso.

The Bellingcat investigative outlet said he was a colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence services and Norwegian media reported that he did not speak Portuguese, Brazil’s national language.

Pavel Rubtsov:

Polish intelligence alleged Rubtsov, a Russian-born Spanish freelance journalist in Spain, was an agent for Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.

Living as Pablo Gonzalez, he was arrested near the Polish border with Ukraine just four days after Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.

He was born in Moscow but moved to Spain at the age of nine and obtained Spanish nationality.

Roman Seleznev:

Seleznev, the son of a Russian lawmaker, was convicted of a string of cybercrimes in the United States, including a 27-year prison sentence for hacking into card payment terminals to steal millions of credit card details.

US officials called his “criminal enterprise … both sophisticated and expansive, with transnational implications.” Dubbed a master hacker, he was arrested in 2014 in the Maldives.

Vladislav Klyushin:

Another Russian convicted of hacking crimes, Klyushin, was sentenced in 2023 to nine years in prison for netting almost $100 million by hacking into corporate systems and then illegally trading shares using the information he had gathered.

Vadim Konoshchenok:

The US Justice Department says Konoshchenok, who it alleges has “ties to Russia’s FSB”, was a key figure in a scheme to provide US-made ammunition and electronics to Russia to support its offensive in Ukraine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington, United States:

US journalist Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan are expected to be released by Russia as part of one of the biggest East-West prisoner swaps since the Cold War, according to US media Thursday.

CNN and other US networks reported the news, with ABC News reporting that the swap involved numerous countries and Russia.

There was no immediate confirmation from US officials. The Kremlin declined to comment on any exchange.

“I still have no comment on this topic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 and convicted in July on spying charges in a fast-track trial denounced as a sham by the United States.

Signs of an imminent prisoner swap had picked up momentum on Thursday, amid reports a plane used in a previous exchange deal had landed in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Hopes had also risen in recent days days after a number of high-profile prisoners in Russia, including Whelan, went missing from prisons where they were serving long terms.

Among those expected to be returned to Russia in exchange is Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen imprisoned in Germany for killing a former Chechen rebel commander in a brazen assassination.

The exchange would be a victory for President Joe Biden, whose vice president, Kamala Harris, faces Republican Donald Trump in the November election.

This would be the first prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since star US basketball player Brittney Griner was swapped in return for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022.

It would also be the biggest exchange since 2010, when 14 alleged spies were exchanged between Russia and the West. They included double agent Sergei Skripal, who was sent by Moscow to Britain and undercover Russian agent Anna Chapman, sent by Washington to Russia.

Before then, major swaps involving more than a dozen people had only taken place during the Cold War, with Soviet and Western powers carrying out exchanges in 1985 and 1986.

– ‘Pushing hard’ –

An aircraft already used in Griner and Bout’s exchange flew from Moscow to Kaliningrad on Thursday morning, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24. The flight was later tracked taking off from Kaliningrad two hours later.

As a rule, swaps can only happen after a conviction in Russia, and the disappearance of several high-profile political prisoners at once is extremely rare.

Gershkovich was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip. He, his employer and the US government all strongly denied the espionage allegations against him.

Biden had said after the sentencing that he was “pushing hard for Evan’s release and will continue to do so.”

Washington has also been working for the release of jailed former Marine Whelan, 54, who was arrested in 2018 in Moscow and charged with espionage.

Whelan was working in security for a US vehicle parts company when he was arrested in Moscow in 2018, and has always asserted that the evidence against him was falsified.

Recently he had complained of feeling abandoned by Washington.

Also among those who disappeared was journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, a 42-year-old joint Russian and British citizen. His lawyers said on Wednesday that they did not know his location after being twice denied access to the facility where he was meant to be held.

Kara-Murza, who spoke out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is serving a 25-year sentence in Siberia for treason and other charges. He suffers from a nerve disease and was moved to a prison hospital earlier this month for medical checks.

Adding to the intrigue was a case in Slovenia, where a court sentenced two Russians suspected of spying for Moscow to more than a year and a half in prison — but then ordered their expulsion from the country.

Arrests of US citizens in Russia have increased in recent years, in what Washington sees as a Kremlin attempt to secure the release of Russians convicted abroad.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Russian court has sentenced US-Russian journalist Alsu Alsu Kurmasheva to more than six years in prison for violating military censorship laws, a court spokesperson said Monday, a ruling her employer slammed as a “mockery of justice”.

Alsu Kurmasheva, 47, was convicted on Friday — the same day a separate Russian court sentenced US journalist Evan Gershkovich for 16 years on espionage charges, also rejected as baseless — but the details were not made public until Monday.

“On Friday, Alsu Kurmasheva was sentenced. Six years, six months,” Natalya Loseva, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court of Tatarstan, told AFP.

The court’s website states only that she had been found guilty in a hearing on Friday, with no details of the sentence.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor with the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) outlet in Prague, was arrested last year while travelling to Russia for a family emergency.

She had her passports confiscated for not declaring her dual citizenship, was then arrested for not registering as a “foreign agent” and while in pre-trial detention was hit with the more serious “false information” charge.

The sentencing was slammed by RFE/RL.

“This secret trial and conviction make a mockery of justice,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus told AFP in an emailed statement.

“The only just outcome is for Alsu Kurmasheva to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors. It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family.”

Russia often holds trials behind closed doors, but issuing a verdict and sentencing in such a manner is extremely unorthodox.

Gershkovich was also convicted in a fast-track trial after spending more than a year in prison.

The speed of the process raised hopes among allies that Washington and Moscow could be close to agreeing a prisoner exchange, as the Kremlin has previously said it will only enter such a deal after a conviction.

Washington and Moscow have both said negotiations for Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, are ongoing, though the fate of Alsu Kurmasheva, as a dual US-Russian citizen, has been less clear.

Her employer and family have been pushing for her release.

Alsu Kurmasheva edited a 2022 book titled “Saying No to War”, which is a collection of interviews and stories from Russians opposed to the military campaign against Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was convicted on July 19 of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison on charges that his employer and the U.S. government have rejected as fabricated.

The swift conclusion of the secretive trial in Russia’s highly politicized legal system could potentially clear the way for a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

Also read | Russia spying charges against reporter ‘categorically false’: WSJ

Gershkovich, his head shaved and looking thin in a dark T-shirt, was calm as he stood in a glass defendants’ cage in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court. He listened impassively to the verdict but gave an occasional smile. When Judge Andrei Mineyev asked him if he had any questions about the verdict, he replied “No, your honor.”

After Mineyev read the verdict, someone in the courtroom shouted, “Evan, we love you!”

Closing arguments took place behind closed doors where Gershkovich did not admit any guilt, according to the court’s press service. Prosecutors requested an 18-year sentence, but the judge opted for a shorter term.

U.S. President Joe Biden said after the conviction that Gershkovich “was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American.”

“We are pushing hard for Evan’s release and will continue to do so,” he said in a statement. “As I have long said and as the U.N. also concluded, there is no question that Russia is wrongfully detaining Evan. Journalism is not a crime.”

Almar Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Editor in Chief Emma Tucker called it a “disgraceful, sham conviction.”

“Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” they said in a statement. “We will continue to do everything possible to press for Evan’s release and to support his family. Journalism is not a crime, and we will not rest until he’s released. This must end now.”

Latour later told The Associated Press in an interview it was “deeply disconcerting” to see Gershkovich in a defendants’ cage with a shaved head “and the more emaciated look,” but he added: “We do believe that he’s otherwise healthy.”

Commenting on the unusually swift trial, he said, “It just goes to show that in an autocracy and a regime like this, trials can move at any speed, with an invisible hand deciding that.” It further underscores “the fake nature of these charges,” he added.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S.

He has been behind bars since his arrest, time that will be counted as part of his sentence. Most of that was in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison — a czarist-era lockup used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement. He was transferred to Yekaterinburg for the trial.

Gershkovich was the first U.S. journalist arrested on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Foreign journalists in Russia were shocked by Gershkovich’s arrest, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.

Unlike the trial’s opening June 26 in Yekaterinburg and previous hearings in Moscow where reporters could see Gershkovich briefly before proceedings began, there was no access to the courtroom Thursday when the trial resumed. Media were allowed in Friday for the verdict. Espionage and treason cases are typically shrouded in secrecy.

Russian courts convict more than 99% of defendants, and prosecutors can appeal sentences that they regard as too lenient.

The U.S. State Department has declared Gershkovich “wrongfully detained,” committing it to assertively seek his release.

Asked Friday about a possible prisoner swap involving Gershkovich, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow and Washington’s “special services” are discussing an exchange. Russia has previously signaled a possible swap, but said a verdict must come first. Even after a verdict, a deal could take months or years.

U.S. officials offered to swap Gershkovich last year but it was rejected by Russia, and they have not made public any possible deals since then.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel on Thursday declined to discuss negotiations about an exchange.

President Vladimir Putin hinted earlier this year he would be open to swapping Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.

Speaking to reporters after the verdict, prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev said Gershkovich was accused of gathering secret information about production and repair of military equipment at Uralvagonzavod, an industrial plant about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yekaterinburg that manufactures tanks. Ozdoyev repeated the claim that Gershkovich was acting on instructions from the CIA.

U.S. officials have dismissed this as bogus. “Evan has never been employed by the United States government. Evan is not a spy,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said last month.

Russia’s interpretation of what constitutes high crimes like espionage and treason is broad, with authorities often going after people who share publicly available information with foreigners and accusing them of divulging state secrets.

U.N. human rights experts said this month that Russia violated international law by jailing Gershkovich and should release him immediately.

Arrests of Americans are increasingly common in Russia, with nine U.S. citizens known to be detained there as tensions between the two countries have escalated over fighting in Ukraine.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow of treating “human beings as bargaining chips.” She singled out Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, 53, a corporate security director from Michigan, who is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted on spying charges that he and the U.S. denied.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that when it comes to Gershkovich, Whelan and other Americans wrongfully detained in Russia and elsewhere, we’re working “quite literally every day.”

“We’re working it as we speak, and we’re not going to stop until we get Evan home, Paul home, till we get others home,” Blinken said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Since sending troops to Ukraine, Russian authorities have detained several U.S. nationals and other Westerners.

In his statement, Biden said that “since the very first day of my administration, I have had no higher priority than seeking the release and safe return of Evan, Paul Whelan and all Americans wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad.”

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 newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

Gershkovich had over a dozen closed hearings on extending his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was brought to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared smiling for the many cameras before the hearings began.

These gave his family, friends and U.S. officials a glimpse of him, and it was a break from his otherwise monotonous prison routine. But his mother, Ella Milman, said they also were a painful reminder that “he is not with us.”

Friends say that while he was in Lefortovo, Gershkovich was not allowed phone calls and was allowed out of his cell for only an hour a day to exercise. He usually spent the rest of his time reading books in English and Russian and writing letters to friends and family.

He relied on his sense of humor to get through the days, according to those close to him.

As he marked his second year in captivity in March, Milman said he was “telling people not to freak out,” but she admitted the strain for friends and family was “taking a toll.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is on trial on spying charges, smiles inside an enclosure for defendants before a court hearing in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed American journalists on July 18 for delaying talks between his U.S. counterparts about a possible prisoner exchange involving imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

A day before Mr. Gershkovich is scheduled to appear in court on espionage charges, Mr. Lavrov told a U.N. news conference that confidential negotiations are still “ongoing.” Mr. Gershkovich, the Journal and the U.S. vehemently deny the allegations against him and denounced the trial as a sham and illegitimate.

On March 29, 2023, Mr. Gershkovich was arrested while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains. He is being charged with espionage, but Russian authorities have not offered any evidence that he was gathering secret information for the United States.

If convicted, he will face up to 20 years in prison, although Russia has indicated that they are open to a prisoner swap after a verdict.

Russian courts convict more than 99% of defendants. Prosecutors can appeal sentences that they consider to be too lenient, and they even can appeal acquittals.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is on trial on spying charges in Russia. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich went on trial in Russia on June 26 on spying charges, which he denies. Here is a short guide to his case.

Who is Evan Gershkovich?

Mr. Gershkovich is a 32-year-old American who grew up in New Jersey, the son of Soviet parents who emigrated to the United States in 1979. He joined the Wall Street Journal in January 2022 and was among the small number of Western journalists to continue reporting from inside Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

When and why was he arrested?

The FSB security service arrested him on March 29, 2023, in a steakhouse in the city of Yekaterinburg, where he was on a reporting trip.

He was accused of spying, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years.

Prosecutors allege he was gathering information on the orders of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency about Uralvagonzavod, a Russian company that makes tanks for the war in Ukraine. Since his arrest, he has been held for nearly 16 months in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.

Mr. Gershkovich and the Wall Street Journal vehemently protest his innocence. They say he was doing his job as a reporter accredited by Russia’s Foreign Ministry to work there. The WSJ says the trial is a sham and a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion.

What does the Kremlin say?

The Kremlin says the case is a legal, not a political, matter but has alleged from the start — without presenting evidence — that Mr. Gershkovich was caught “red-handed”.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is open to a possible prisoner exchange with the United States involving Gershkovich, and that contacts have taken place but must remain secret.

What is the U.S.’ stand?

Washington says Russia is using Mr. Gershkovich as a bargaining chip and should immediately free him and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was convicted in 2020 and is serving a 16-year sentence for spying. It has designated both men as “wrongfully detained”.

What will the trial look like?

The trial is taking place behind closed doors, meaning that the proceedings are secret and the lawyers must sign non-disclosure agreements. No press, family members or U.S. embassy officials are allowed inside, although two U.S. consular staff travelled to Yekaterinburg for the start of the case and had brief access to Mr. Gershkovich before it began.

Wednesday’s hearing concluded after several hours and the next one is on August 13, an indication that the case will drag on for a number of months.

Evgeniy Smirnov, a lawyer specialising in cases of treason and espionage, said there was no precedent in Mr. Putin’s Russia for a defendant in a spy case to be acquitted in court.

But if Mr. Gershkovich is found guilty, it could clear the way for a deal on a prisoner swap — something that Russia said, very early on in his case, could only happen after a trial had taken place.

Judge Andrei Mineyev is hearing the case. He is the son of a policeman and has spent three decades working in the legal system. He is also presiding over the treason trial that opened this month of Ksenia Karelina, a U.S.-Russian dual national accused of donating funds to the Ukrainian armed forces.

In a 2021 interview, he said he had only overseen “three or four” acquittals in his career. “The system is organised in such a way that, ideally, cases against innocent and uninvolved persons do not get to court at all. That’s why the percentage is so small. There is nothing wrong with that,” he said.

Evan Gershkovich. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

Russia will hold the espionage trial of detained U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, who denies charges of collecting secrets for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), behind closed doors later this month, a court in city of Yekaterinburg said on June 17.

Evan Gershkovich was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on March 29, 2023, in a steak house in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.

“According to the investigation authorities, the American journalist of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. 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.

“The process will take place behind closed doors.” The first hearing is scheduled for June 26,” the court said.

Russia has said Mr. Gershkovich was caught “red-handed” and the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said he was trying to obtain military secrets. Mr. Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the Cold War over three decades ago, denies the charges.

The White House has called the charges “ridiculous” and President Joe Biden has said Mr. Gershkovich’s detention is “totally illegal”. The Wall Street Journal denies he is a spy and has called for his immediate release, as has his family.

A picture taken on July 24, 2021 shows journalist Evan Gershkovich.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has spent a year behind bars in Russia, is awaiting a trial on espionage charges the White House says are fabricated but could still see him jailed for decades.

His arrest in March 2023 on charges of spying — the first such charge against a Western journalist since the Soviet era — showed that the Kremlin was prepared to go further than ever before in what President Vladimir Putin has called a “hybrid war” with the West.

Russia has kept information about his case classified, sharing no details since his arrest in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on March 29, 2023.

The U.S.-born son of Soviet emigres covered Russia for six years as the Kremlin made independent, on-the-ground reporting increasingly dangerous and illegal.

The Wall Street Journal and the White House vehemently deny Russia’s accusation, which they see as a false pretext to secure the release of Russians in custody in the U.S.

Mr. Putin said last month that he would like to see Mr. Gershkovich released as part of a prisoner exchange, but cautioned certain “terms” were being discussed.

The 32-year-old, who has been remanded in custody until at least the end of June, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Mr. Gershkovich had carried on reporting from across Russia, even after dozens of other foreign correspondents left over Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

Mr. Gershkovich reported extensively on how ordinary Russians experienced the Ukraine conflict, speaking to the families of dead soldiers and Putin critics.

Breaking stories and getting people to talk was becoming increasingly hard, Mr. Gershkovich told friends before his arrest.

But as long as it was not impossible, he saw a reason to be there.

Washington:

President Joe Biden said on Friday the U.S. will impose costs for Russia’s “appalling attempts” to use Americans as bargaining chips in a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia.

Gershkovich, 32, became the first U.S. journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War when he was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on March 29 last year.

“As I have told Evan’s parents, I will never give up hope either. We will continue working every day to secure his release,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House that called the journalist’s detention “wholly unjust and illegal.”

“We will continue to denounce and impose costs for Russia’s appalling attempts to use Americans as bargaining chips,” Biden added.

The Kremlin said on Thursday complete silence was needed when it came to discussions about possible prisoner exchanges involving Gershkovich.

The reporter, the Journal and the U.S. government all deny he is a spy. The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said Gershkovich had been trying to obtain military secrets.

He has now spent a year at Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo prison, which is closely associated with the FSB, and his detention has been extended to June 30.

Top leaders in the U.S. Congress from both parties including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson also issued a joint statement on Friday calling the journalist’s arrest baseless and unjust.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Gershkovich’s arrest had made Russia’s already restrictive media landscape “more oppressive.”

In their statements on Friday, Biden and Blinken also condemned the detention of Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine arrested in Moscow in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison on spying charges in 2020. He and the U.S. government deny the charges.

“To Evan, to Paul Whelan, and to all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad: We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring you home,” Biden said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)