Evan Gershkovich to stay in Russian jail until at least end of March

The Wall Street Journal correspondent has spent 303 days behind bars with no date set for his trial.

US journalist Evan Gershkovich is escorted out of the Lefortovsky Court building in Moscow on January 26. Picture: AFP

Evan Gershkovich, the American reporter charged with spying in Russia, is to remain in custody until at least the end of March, bringing his time behind bars to a year as he awaits trial.

Wearing a grey hoodie and jeans, Gershkovich, a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, looked calm in a video shared by Russian news agencies showing him outside Lefortovo district court in Moscow.

His pre-trial detention has been extended several times since his arrest in March last year. He has now spent a total of 304 days behind bars, and no date has been set for his trial.

The American consul-general, Stuart Wilson, was reported to have attended the hearing, which was closed to the public because, the authorities say, details of the criminal case are classified. After the proceedings a masked man was seen escorting Gershkovich, 32, through light snow to a prison van.

The reporter was detained while on an assignment in Russia and charged a month later with “espionage in the interests of his country”. Both Gershkovich and the WSJ reject the charges, and the US has accused Russia of holding him for political reasons.

The Federal Security Service said it had seized Gershkovich in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals on suspicion of “collecting classified information about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex”.

Independent Russian media say he was on a journalistic assignment that involved talking to employees of Uralvagonzavod, a tank manufacturer. He denies the spying charge but faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

The WSJ says that Gershkovich was “wrongfully detained for … simply doing his job as a journalist, and any portrayal to the contrary is fiction”.

President Vladimir Putin raised the prospect last month of releasing Gershkovich in a prisoner swap deal. At a televised news conference, Putin said he hoped an agreement would be reached with the US on Gershkovich and another American citizen, Paul Whelan, who was convicted of espionage in 2020.

Asked about Gershkovich and Whelan, Putin said: “It’s not that we decline to send them home. We want to come to terms and these agreements must be mutually acceptable.”

The White House has declared Gershkovich to be wrongfully detained. Russia has not provided any evidence to support the espionage charges.

US officials suggested at the start of last month that a “significant proposal” to secure the reporter’s release in a prisoner exchange, along with Whelan, had been rejected by Russia.

Gershkovich, who grew up in New Jersey as the son of Soviet emigres, joined the WSJ as a correspondent in Moscow in early 2022. He previously worked in Russia for Agence France-Presse and The Moscow Times.

The Times