The journalist faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, and the prospects for a prisoner exchange deal between the United States and Russia are uncertain.
The closed-door trial in Russia against American journalist Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage, has begun 15 months after his arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg.
The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter appeared Wednesday in a glass cage in the Yekaterinburg courtroom, his head shaved and dressed in a black and blue checkered shirt.
“The judge has entered the room. The process has begun,” Irina Toshcheva, press secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, told reporters.
Gershkovich is accused by prosecutors of collecting secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a plant that makes tanks for Russia's war in Ukraine, on orders from the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Journal said the “secret trial” would “offer him few, if any, of the legal protections that would be afforded him in the United States and other Western countries.”
The journalist, his employer and the US government strongly deny the allegations, saying he was simply doing his job, with accreditation from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
On Tuesday, Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker wrote in a letter to readers that the Russian court proceedings are “unfair to Evan and a continuation of this travesty of justice that has gone on for far too long.”
Tucker said: “This false accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a false conviction for an innocent man.”
If convicted, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. A verdict could be months away because Russian trials are often postponed for weeks.
Tucker noted that even covering the Gershkovich trial “presents challenges for us” and other media outlets “about how to responsibly report on the proceedings and the allegations.”
“Let's be very clear, once again: Evan is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. “He was on a mission in Russia, where he was an accredited journalist,” he wrote.
“Hostage diplomacy”
Gershkovich, the American-born son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, is the first Western journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia.
His arrest came about a year after President Vladimir Putin pushed through laws that paralyzed journalists, criminalizing criticism of the war in Ukraine and statements seen as discrediting the military.
After his arrest on March 29, 2023, Gershkovich was held in Lefortovo prison in Moscow. Requests for his release were repeatedly rejected.
The process will be held behind closed doors, meaning the media is excluded and friends, family and US embassy staff are not allowed in to support it.
Putin has indicated that Russia is open to the idea of a prisoner swap involving Gershkovich and others, saying contacts with the United States have taken place but must remain secret.
The United States, in turn, has accused Russia of carrying out “hostage diplomacy.”
He has designated Gershkovich and another imprisoned American, security executive Paul Whelan, arrested in Moscow for espionage in 2018, as “unjustly detained,” thereby committing the government to assertively seek their release.
