MOSCOW ( AP ) — U. S. journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been jailed for over a year in Russia on espionage charges, will stand trial in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, where he was detained, authorities said Thursday.
An accusation of The Wall Street Journal columnist has been finalized and his case was filed to the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in the area about 1, 400 meters (870 miles ) south of Moscow, according to Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office. No information was given as to when the test may begin.
Gershkovich, 32, is accused of “gathering key information” on purchases from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a hospital in the Sverdlovsk area that produces and repairs military technology, the Prosecutor General’s department said in a speech, revealing for the first time the details of the accusations against him.
In March 2023, Gershkovich was detained while on a reporting journey to Yekaterinburg and charged with spying for the United States. The writer, his company and the U. S. authorities denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, alleged after arresting Gershkovich that he was acting on U. S. requests to collect state techniques but provided no evidence to back up the charges.
Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, criticized the development, saying there was “absolutely no legitimacy to those accusations” and stating that the U.S. government may continue to work to provide Gershkovich home.
” Evan has done nothing wrong. He ought not to have been second detained. News is not a crime”, Miller said. ” He is facing bogus fees,” he said. And the Russian state knows that they’re fake. He may be released quickly”.
The Biden administration has made efforts to arrange his release, but the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Moscow would just take into account a prisoner transfer once his test results.
” Russia’s latest shift toward a fake test is, while expected, greatly disappointing and also no less outrageous”, a speech by Almar Latour, Dow Jones CEO and publication of the Journal, and Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor in chief, said.
They added that Gershkovich’s accusations were “false and unfounded”
” The Russian government’s putting of Evan is disgusting, disgusting and based on calculated and open rests. Media is not a murder. Evan’s event is an assault on free push”, the statement said. We had hoped to prevent this, and we now anticipate that the U.S. government will make additional work to free Evan.
Roger Carstens, the Biden administration’s special presidential envoy who serves as the U. S. government’s top hostage negotiator, said that though he had been hopeful about striking a deal to get Gershkovich home before this point, the latest development “does n’t slow or stop us down”.
” The bottom line is, this was not unpredicted”, he said.
Uralvagonzavod, a express container and rail car manufacturer in the area of Nizhny Tagil, about 100 kilometers ( 60 miles ) north of Yekaterinburg, became known in 2011- 12 as a core of support for President Vladimir Putin.
Igor Kholmanskih, a plant foreman who was featured on Putin’s annual phone-in program in December 2011, attacked widespread protests in Moscow at the time as a threat to” stability” and suggested that he and his colleagues should visit the Russian capital to help halt the unrest. Kholmanskikh was appointed as Putin’s envoy to the region a week later.
Putin has indicated that he is willing to trade Gershkovich for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany, who is serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent. He has also said that he believes a deal could be reached.
Asked last week by The Associated Press about Gershkovich, Putin said the U. S. is” taking energetic steps” to secure his release. He told international news agencies in St. Petersburg that any such releases “are n’t decided via mass media” but through a “discreet, calm and professional approach”.
In an allusion to a potential prisoner swap, he continued,” And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity.”
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, when the Cold War was at its height, he was the first U.S. journalist arrested on espionage charges. Even though Russia’s military had implemented increasingly repressive laws governing freedom of speech following its entry of troops into Ukraine, Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists there.
Gershkovich, who was the son of Soviet immigrant parents who settled in New Jersey, was fluent in Russian and immigrated there in 2017 to work before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
Since his arrest, Gershkovich has been held at Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, a notorious czarist- era prison used during Josef Stalin’s purges, when executions were carried out in its basement.
U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who frequently visits Gershkovich in prison and observes his court hearings, has called the allegations against him “fiction” and claimed that Russia is “using American citizens as pawns to achieve political goals.”
Since sending troops to Ukraine, Russian authorities have detained several U. S. nationals and other Westerners, seemingly bolstering that idea.
