A Russian court announced on Monday that the trial of jailed American journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges will begin next week and that hearings will be held behind closed doors.
The first hearing, scheduled for June 26, comes nearly 15 months after Mr. Gershkovich, 32, was detained by security services in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow. Mr. Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, will likely be transferred to Yekaterinburg to stand trial after spending more than a year in a maximum-security prison in Moscow.
Gershkovich, who worked as a journalist for various publications in Russia for more than five years before his arrest, is accused of tampering with the U.S. government and his employers. The State Department said Nominated by Mr. Gershkovich As “I was unjustly detained” This effectively forces them to work for his safe release.
The announcement of the trial date marks an important step in Gershkovich’s case, which runs parallel to talks between Russian and American security services over a possible swap.
Russian authorities have signalled they might consider a prisoner swap for Mr Gershkovich, but only after a verdict has been reached in his case. Espionage trials in Russia typically last around four months, but can take up to a year, according to lawyers who have tried such cases.
Russian prosecutors announced last week that they had finalized an espionage indictment against Mr Gershkovich, alleging that “at the direction of the CIA” and using “elaborate and covert methods” he “collected secret information” about a factory in the Sverdlovsk region that produces tanks and other weapons.
The prosecutor’s statement was the first time that a representative of the Russian government had detailed the accusations against Gershkovich, but evidence to support the charges was lacking.
The trial, which is being held behind closed doors, is unlikely to shed any further light on his case.
The case will be heard by Judge Andrey N. Mineev of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, according to a court statement. In an interview with a Russian news website in 2021, Mineev said: Only four acquittals This is the most prolific charge that Gershkovich has faced in his decades-long career. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
The Wall Street Journal published a statement last week predicting a “sham trial.”
Gershkovich is one of several Americans detained in Russia in recent years, raising concerns that his case is trying to use Americans as a bargaining chip to swap them for Russians held in Western countries.
Other Americans held in Russia include U.S. Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty editor Ars Kurmasheva, and Mark Fogel, an American teacher at the Anglo American School in Moscow who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling in 2022. Last week, a Russian court sentenced Yuri Malev, a Russian-American man who has criticized Russia, the Russian leadership and the war in Ukraine on social media, to three and a half years in prison.