Evan Gershkovich trial to be behind closed doors, Russian court says

The trial of detained US journalist Evan Gershkovich will be held behind closed doors, Russian state media, citing the courts service, has reported.

Russian officials have accused the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter of collecting “secret information” from a Russian tank factory on behalf of the CIA. He denies the allegations.

His trial will open on 26 June at a court in Yekaterinburg, the city in the Urals he was arrested in last March.

Since his arrest, Mr Gershkovich, 32 has been held in Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo prison.

The WSJ dismissed the trial as a “sham”, while US officials said the charges had “zero credibility”.

Russian prosecutors said Mr Gershkovich was caught “red-handed”, with the FSB state security service claiming that he was trying to obtain military secrets.

Prosecutors added 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.

In a statement, they accused him of carrying “out the illegal actions using painstaking conspiratorial methods”.

According to prosecutors, he was acting “on the instructions of the CIA”.

Mr Gershkovich has spent more than a year behind bars on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.

US President Joe Biden called his detention “totally illegal”, and the Wall Street Journal accused Moscow of “stockpiling Americans in Russian jails in order to be able to trade them at a later date”.

Russia is holding a number of other US citizens – including several journalists and active duty military members – in prisons across the country.

Mr Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the end of the Cold War over three decades ago.

In December, the US state department said it had made a “substantial” offer to Russia to secure Mr Gershkovich’s release, which was rebuffed.

Moscow is said to be seeking the release of Vadim Krasikov – found guilty in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen commander in Berlin – in return. President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm this during an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year.