A Russian court said it will hear closing arguments on July 19 in the alleged espionage trial of U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Mr. Gershkovich, who has been in custody for more than a year, attended the trial on July 18, according to the court. The trial is taking place behind closed doors, and reporters could not see Mr. Gershkovich, unlike in previous court sessions when he was briefly visible before the start of the proceedings.
It isn’t unusual for espionage cases to be cloaked in secrecy.
The 32-year-old journalist was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service on March 29, 2023, while on assignment in Yekaterinburg, Russia, about 900 miles east of Moscow.
Prosecutors allege that the Wall Street Journal reporter gathered secret information on the orders of the CIA about a company that manufactures tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr. Gershkovich, a U.S.-born son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, is the first Western journalist arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia.
The U.S. State Department has declared him “wrongfully detained” and has committed the government to seeking his release.
US Officials Speak Out
On July 16, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of treating “human beings as bargaining chips” in her remarks at the United Nations. She named Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018. Mr. Whelan, 53, was arrested for alleged espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison.“We will not rest until Paul and Evan come home and Russia has ceased this barbaric practice of holding human pawns once and for all,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said. “And that is a promise.”
Mr. Gershkovich’s trial started on June 26 in Yekaterinburg after he spent about 15 months in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison.
On the first day of the trial, the court said it would adjourn until mid-August. But Mr. Gershkovich’s lawyers asked for the second hearing to be held earlier, according to Russian state media, citing court officials.
Mr. Gershkovich’s employer, The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. officials have dismissed the alleged espionage charges as fabricated and denounced the trial as illegitimate and a sham.
