Russian court moves quickly in trial of journalist Evan Gershkovich

A Russian court on Thursday completed its examination of evidence in the case of alleged spying against American journalist Evan Gershkovich on only the second day of hearings, with closing arguments from the defense and prosecution due on Friday, Russian media reported.

As Gershkovich’s trial resumed this week, the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, all but declared the Wall Street Journalist correspondent guilty – echoing earlier Kremlin remarks although authorities have not made public any evidence to support their allegations.

A court spokesperson said the court’s examination of the evidence in the case had concluded on the second day of the trial, with arguments from the defense and prosecution due on Friday, the Interfax news agency reported.

The process was remarkably swift for an espionage trial, which often run to many months in Russia. Local Yekaterinburg outlet It’s My City reported that the prosecution would make its sentencing request on Friday, suggesting an inevitable guilty verdict could follow quickly.

“We have got irrefutable evidence corroborating that Gershkovich was involved in some espionage activities,” Lavrov said Wednesday at a news conference at the United Nations in New York, where Russia is currently chairing the Security Council.

Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal, and the Biden administration have vehemently denied there is any basis to Russia’s allegations and have said he has essentially been taken hostage. Russia previously has arrested Americans, such as WNBA star Brittney Griner, on what appear to be minor charges, and then used them as bargaining chips to win the release of Russians imprisoned for serious crimes in the West.

The trial this week at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg was moved up from Aug. 13 at the request of Gershkovich’s defense team, according to the court. The first hearing was held late last month.

An swift completion of the trial could open the way for movement on a prisoner exchange. Lavrov on Wednesday confirmed that negotiations over an exchange for Gershkovich were underway, after Russian officials previously had said no trade would be possible until after his trial is complete. More than 99 percent of Russian criminal prosecutions result in convictions.

“The intelligence services of the two countries … have been involved in contacts looking into the possibility of an exchange,” Lavrov said. “Everyone knows that this topic needs to be discussed calmly, confidentially even though it is constantly introduced into the public space by American journalists, which is not helping. But the contacts are ongoing.”

Lavrov’s assertion of “irrefutable evidence” - while not providing any - echoed the remarks of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who claimed after Gershkovich’s arrest last year that he had been “caught red-handed.”

Gershkovich, 32, who was accredited by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, was detained in March 2023 on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg and accused of espionage. He has pleaded not guilty.

Russian prosecutors allege that the journalist was operating on the orders of the CIA, gathering secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a state-owned machine-building factory in Nizhny Tagil, about 87 miles southeast of Yekaterinburg. The factory manufactures tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The hearing was closed, as is customary in Russian trials in cases of espionage or treason, meaning that the nature of the evidence presented by prosecutors against Gershkovich probably will never be publicly known. Gershkovich faces a prison term of up to 20 years if convicted.

Vyacheslav Vegner, a member of the Sverdlovsk region’s Legislative Assembly, appeared Thursday as a witness in the case and was questioned by both sides, he told Interfax news agency, which offered no details on what he said or whether he was a prosecution or defense witness. He said he had spoken to Gershkovich during the journalist’s reporting trip to Yekaterinburg.

Russian media outlet SOTAvision quoted Vegner as saying that Gershkovich asked him if the profile of the military-industrial plants in Yekaterinburg was changing, how many shifts they worked and whether there was sufficient personnel.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said last month that the case against Gershkovich was “not about evidence, procedural norms, or the rule of law. It is about the Kremlin using American citizens to achieve its political objectives.”

At the United Nations, Lavrov said: “The use of journalists for intelligence-gathering purposes, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, is a tradition.”

Before Gershkovich’s trial opened in Yekaterinburg on June 26, Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker described the charges as baseless, saying they would “inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man.”

Former president Donald Trump has said he would use his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to have Gershkovich freed shortly after the November U.S. election, in which he expects to be elected president.

Gershkovich’s arrest, as well as those of several other Americans, has raised the specter of a renewal of “hostage diplomacy,” when nations arrest innocent citizens for use in exchanges or to send pointed political messages.

Another American jailed for spying, former U.S. Marine and corporate security executive Paul Whelan, 54, has spent more than 5½ years behind bars in Russia, having been passed over in two previous prisoner exchange deals with Russia.

These occurred when Griner, convicted in Moscow of drug possession in August 2022, was freed in an exchange that December for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was freed in April 2022 in exchange for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was jailed in the United States for drug smuggling.

The State Department has declared both Gershkovich and Whelan to be unlawfully detained by Russia, elevating the efforts to free them. When the trial started, Peskov said that the charges against Gershkovich resonated in the United States, “but it is not so resonant in our country.”

Russia has also arrested a Russian American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor at the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague and charged her with failing to register as a foreign agent and spreading fake news about the Russia-Ukraine war. Kurmasheva and RFE/RL reject the charges as false.

In February, a court in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, in the Far East, convicted German journalist Björn Blaschke from radio broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), on charges of discrediting the Russian military, over a social media post in 2022. Blaschke left the country after being fined and released from custody.

Russia’s Center for Combating Extremism for the Jewish Autonomous Region mounted the charges over a post by Blaschke on X on Aug. 2, 2022, in German, which stated: “Russia’s attack on Ukraine exacerbates the situation: rising world prices for wheat and fuel also affected Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.”

Blaschke pleaded not guilty and testified that the post was a quote from a Kenyan man, posted during a reporting trip to the East African nation.

Russian Federal Security Service agents routinely search the phones of foreign journalists traveling to Russia.

A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced American musician Michael Travis Leake to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony after convicting him of attempted drug trafficking. Leake was the lead vocalist for a Moscow-based band, Lovi Noch, and produced music for Russian bands.

He was arrested in June 2023 and accused of organizing the sales of drugs to young people; he has denied the charges.