The Russian espionage trial of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich is expected to begin on June 26 and will be held behind closed doors, the court hearing the case said in a statement.
Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, has been jailed since his arrest in March 2023 and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The trial is expected to take place at the Sverdlovsky District Court in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city, where he was arrested.
The court said the trial would be held behind closed doors, as is common in espionage cases.
The prosecutor general's office first announced the charges against Gershkovich, 32, last week, saying he was accused of “collecting secret information” on the orders of the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that manufactures and repairs military equipment.
The journalist, his employer and the US government have denied the charges and Washington has found it had unlawfully detained the journalist.
Russia's Federal Security Service claimed that Gershkovich was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets, but did not provide evidence to support the claim.
“Evan did nothing wrong and should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last week.
Putin said a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich and suggested he was open to a prisoner swap. (Mikhail Metzel/AP)
The Biden administration has sought to negotiate Gershkovich's release, but the Russian Foreign Ministry has said it would only consider a prisoner exchange after a court verdict has been reached.
Putin said a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich and suggested he would be willing to swap him for a Russian imprisoned in Germany.
It is believed to be Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of a Chechen Georgian in Berlin in 2019.
Asked by The Associated Press about Gershkovich, Putin said the United States was “taking vigorous measures” to secure his release.
Speaking to international media at an economic forum in St. Petersburg in early June, he told such announcements would be “not decided through the mass media” but through a careful, calm and professional approach.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, left, stands inside a glass cage in a courtroom at the First Appeals Court in Moscow, Russia (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press)
Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be detained on espionage charges since Nicholas Danilov in 1986 at the height of the Cold War.
Gershkovich's arrest came as a shock to foreign journalists in Russia, even as Russia has imposed increasingly repressive laws against freedom of speech since sending troops into Ukraine.
The son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich is fluent in Russian and moved to New Jersey in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times and was hired by The Wall Street Journal in 2022.
U.S. Ambassador Lynn Tracy, who regularly visited Gershkovich in prison and attended his court hearings, said the charges against him were “fictitious” and that Russia was “using American citizens as pawns to achieve its political objectives.”
