WSJ reporter Gershkovich to see year out in Russian jail

A court in Moscow rules on Tuesday The Wall Street Journal correspondent should be kept behind bars until the end of January.

Evan Gershkovich has been held on bogus espionage charges. Picture: AFP

Evan Gershkovich, the American reporter accused of espionage by the Kremlin, will spend Christmas in a Russian prison after a court in Moscow ruled he should be kept behind bars until the end of January.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested at the end of March while on assignment for The Wall Street Journal in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, 1600km east of Moscow. He is the first Western reporter to be charged with spying in Russia since the Soviet era.

Gershkovich and the WSJ have denied the charges and the White House has classified him as “wrongfully detained”.

He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. No date has been set for his trial, and he is being held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.

A video from the courtroom showed Gershkovich standing in a metal cage for defendants, wearing a checked shirt and a hooded jacket. The hearing was held behind closed doors, and no journalists were allowed inside.

“Evan has now been unjustly imprisoned for nearly 250 days, and every day is a day too long,” the WSJ said. “The accusations against him are categorically false and his continued imprisonment is a brazen and outrageous attack on a free press, which is critical for a free society. We continue to stand with Evan and call for his immediate release.”

Moscow has not made public the exact nature of the allegations against Gershkovich.

The son of Soviet emigres, he grew up in New Jersey and moved to Moscow in 2017 to work at The Moscow Times, an independent news website. He later took a job covering Russia and the former Soviet Union for the WSJ shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.

President Joe Biden has pledged to do everything possible to bring Gershkovich home. The White House is also seeking to secure the release of Paul Whelan, a former US marine arrested in Russia in 2018 on spying charges and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Mr Whelan says he was framed. A second American journalist was also detained last month. Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American citizen who is an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, was charged with failing to register as a “foreign agent” in Russia after she returned to the country for a family emergency. She faces up to five years in prison.

THE TIMES