Russia | The US journalist Evan Gershkovich will stand trial today after 15 months of waiting – This is how the case has progressed

in Russia of a US journalist who had been imprisoned for more than a year by Evan Gershkovich the trial is scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

Gershkovich is accused of espionage, for which he can expect a sentence of up to 20 years. The trial takes place behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg.

So far, there is no information on the duration of the trial.

American magazine Gershkovich, who worked for The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), was arrested in late March 2023 while in Yekaterinburg, at the foot of the Ural Mountains, to obtain information about the notorious mercenary company Wagner.

According to the prosecutor’s view, Gershkovich worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and collected secret information about a Russian tank manufacturer. About a hundred kilometers north of Yekaterinburg is the headquarters of Uralvagonzavod, which manufactures battle tanks.

The Russian intelligence service FSB has claimed to have caught Gershkovich in the act when he was trying to obtain military secrets.

After his arrest, Gershkovich was transferred to Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where he has been languishing for the past 15 months. During that time, his pretrial detention has been extended five times. In prison, Gershkovich spends most of his time in a small cell, isolated from the rest of the world, he says WSJ.

Gershkovich is the first US journalist to be accused of espionage in Russia since the Cold War.

Both the WSJ and Gershkovich themselves deny the allegations. At the time of his arrest, Gershkovich had the necessary permits to work as a journalist in Russia and he was just doing his job, WSJ reminds.

“The smearing of Evan is repugnant and disgusting to the Russian administration and is based on calculated and transparent lies. Journalism is not a crime”, states the magazine in the statement.

Gershkovich’s situation has also received a lot of attention at the state level. President Joe Biden the administration has demanded Gershkovich’s release and declared him wrongfully detained.

The United States has accused Russia of inventing trumped-up charges and using Gershkovich as a pawn. It has been guessedthat the president Vladimir Putin would try to arrange an assassin Vadim Krasikov back to Russia through a prisoner exchange. Krasikov is serving a life sentence in Germany.

32 year old Gershkovich’s parents fled the Soviet Union to the United States in 1979. He has lived and worked as a journalist in Russia since 2017. Before Gershkovich joined the WSJ in 2022, he worked for the Russian newspaper The Moscow Times and the news agency AFP.

Practicing independent journalism has become difficult in Russia since the country started a war of aggression in Ukraine in early 2022.

Last December, at least 22 journalists were in Russian prisons, he says press freedom organization Committee to Protect Journalists. One of them is a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, a journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. He was arrested because he was not registered as a “foreign agent”.

Several Russian journalists have fled their homeland, and in practice local independent media have had to stop their activities or move them outside Russia’s borders. The number of foreign journalists in Russia has also decreased during the war.