The Wall Street Journal rejects ‘false and baseless’ accusation against a 32-year-old reporter who has been in custody since March 2023.
Russian prosecutors said American journalist Evan Gershkovich will be tried in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg, where he was detained more than a year ago after being accused of working for the CIA.
Gershkovich, 32, is accused of “gathering secret information” on CIA orders about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that produces and repairs military equipment, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement, revealing for the first time the details of the charges against him. . The statement did not give a date for the trial.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal journalist, has been in prison since he was arrested in Yekaterinburg, about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of Moscow, on March 29, 2023, and was charged with espionage. He denies any wrongdoing.
Following the Russian announcement, the Journal stated that Gershkovich faced “a false and unfounded accusation.” A joint statement from Almar Latour, the newspaper’s editor, and its editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, demanded Gershkovich’s immediate release.
“Russia’s latest move toward a mock trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and no less scandalous,” the statement said.
“Evan spent 441 days unjustly detained in a Russian prison simply for doing his job. Evan is a journalist. The Russian regime’s defamation of Evan is disgusting, disgusting and based on calculated and transparent lies.”
The United States designated Gershkovich as “unjustly detained” in April 2023, and President Joe Biden called his detention “completely illegal.”
Latour and Tucker said they now hope the US government will intensify efforts to secure their release.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington will continue to work to bring Gershkovich home.
“Evan did nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime,” Miller said. “The accusations against him are false. And the Russian government knows they are false. He should be released immediately.”
Potential prisoner exchange
Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War, when Moscow enacted increasingly repressive free speech laws after sending troops into Ukraine. Washington tried to negotiate his release, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider a prisoner exchange only after a verdict in his trial.
Asked last week by the Associated Press news agency about Gershkovich, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US was “taking strong measures” to secure the journalist’s release. He told international news agencies in a rare press conference that such announcements “are not decided through mass media” but through a “discreet, calm and professional approach”.
“And they should certainly be decided solely on the basis of reciprocity,” he added, alluding to a potential prisoner exchange.
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The Uralvagonzavod factory, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Yekaterinburg, was sanctioned by Western countries. Based in the city of Nizhny Tagil, in the Sverdlovsk region, it plays a crucial role in supplying tanks for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The factory, which is run by a state conglomerate controlled by one of Putin’s allies, has spoken publicly about producing T-90M main battle tanks and modernizing T-72B3M tanks.
The number of tanks Russia lost in battle in Ukraine is a military secret in Russia, which claims to have increased tank production.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank said in February that Russia had lost more than 3,000 tanks – the equivalent of its entire pre-war active inventory – but had enough substandard armored vehicles in storage to years of replacements.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
