The espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia will begin on June 26 and will take place behind closed doors, according to a statement issued Monday by the court that will hear the case.
Gershkovich, a US citizen, has been in custody since his arrest in March 2023 and faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.
The trial will take place in the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, where he was arrested.
The court announced that the trial would be closed to the public, as is customary in espionage trials.
Gershkovich, 32, is suspected of “gathering secret information” on CIA orders concerning Uralvagonzavod, a plant that manufactures and maintains military equipment, according to the Prosecutor General’s office, which released the first details of the charges against him last week.
The reporter, his company, and the US government all refuted the charges, and Washington declared him illegally held.
Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged that Gershkovich was acting on U.S. orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to back up the accusations.
“Evan has done nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last week. “The charges against him are false. And the Russian government knows that they’re false. He should be released immediately.”
The Biden administration has sought to negotiate Gershkovich’s release, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider a prisoner swap only after a trial verdict.
Uralvagonzavod, a state tank and railroad car manufacturer in Nizhny Tagil, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Yekaterinburg, gained prominence in 2011-12 as a source of support for President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has said he believes a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich, hinting he would be open to swapping him for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany.
Gershkovich was the first U.S. journalist taken into custody on espionage charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986 at the height of the Cold War.
Gershkovich’s arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country had enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.
The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich is fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.
