US Journalist Evan Gershkovich To Stand Trial In Russia On Espionage Charges (Ximage@playbookdc)
Evan Gershkovich, the US journalist will go on trial in Russia on espionage charges, said Russian prosecutors. Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter, has been accused of collecting “secret information” from a Russian tank factory on behalf of the CIA.
The prosecutors said Gershkovich will stand a trial in a court in Yekaterinburg – the city in the Urals he was arrested in last March while covering the war in Ukraine.
WSJ called the forthcoming trial as a “sham”, and Gershkovich denies the charges. Washington considers the journalist to be “wrongfully detained”.
The Russian prosecutors said that an investigation had established that the reporter had collected “secret information” about the “production and repair of military equipment” from a Russian tank factory. They accused him of carrying “out the illegal actions using painstaking conspiratorial methods”, which the prosecutors said, was “on the instructions of the CIA”.
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If found guilty, Gershkovich will face 20 years in prison. Since his arrest last March, the reporter remained in pre-trial detention in Moscow, 1000 miles (1609km) from Yekaterinburg.
Gershkovich is the first US journalist to be arrested in Russia since the Cold War over the charges of espionage.
On a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, 1000 miles away from Moscow, Gershkovich was arrested by FSB, domestic security service of Russia. The Russian authorities said that Evan was “caught red handed” with “classified information”.
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WSJ accused Moscow of stockpiling Americans in its jails in order to trade them at later date. She said Vladimir Putin, is holding him as a bargaining chip.
Earlier this year, during an interview with Tucker Carlson, a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich, but there was a “but”, in his statement. Putin said it relied upon “our partners [taking] reciprocal steps”, and hinted at the identity of a person Russia would accept in a prisoner exchange.
