This Friday, the 19th, a Russian court sentenced American journalist Ivan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison for espionage, a charge the reporter, his family, and the United States vehemently deny.
The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal journalist was detained on March 29, 2023 while visiting the city of Yekaterinburg to report. Authorities accused him, without any evidence, of collecting classified information for the United States.
Judge Andrei Minev ordered that Gershkovich serve his sentence in a closed prison colony in Yekaterinburg.
Closing arguments took place behind closed doors, where Gershkovich pleaded not guilty, the court’s news service reported. Prosecutors asked for an 18-year sentence, but the judge opted for a shorter sentence.
He has been behind bars since his arrest, which will count as part of his sentence. Since March 2023, the journalist has been incarcerated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison — a tsarist-era prison used for executions in its basement during Joseph Stalin’s purges.
Prosecutors accused him of compiling sensitive information for the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, one of Russia’s main arms manufacturers that produces the T-90 tanks used in Ukraine. Gershkovich was the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges by Nicholas Daniloff at the height of the Cold War in 1986.
US officials have denied the allegations. “Evan was never employed by the US government. Evan was not a spy,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said last month.
The Wall Street Journal criticized the sentence and vowed to continue to press for his release.
“This shameful and wrongful sentence comes after Ivan spent 478 days in prison, unjustly detained, separated from his family and friends, and prevented from reporting for doing his job as a journalist,” said Almar Latour, the newspaper’s editor and editor. In-Chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
The son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey in the US, Gershkovich is fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times before being hired by the WSJ in 2022.
Possible prisoner exchange
The US believes Gershkovich was arrested to force a prisoner exchange at the height of tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine.
“We have worked tirelessly for Ivan’s release and will continue to do so,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Asked Friday about the prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday the 17th that Moscow and Washington’s “special services” were discussing the matter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated earlier this year that he was willing to replace Gershkovich with Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.
The arrest of the American journalist caused great solidarity and anger among Western countries. This Friday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the reporter’s conviction “abhorrent,” while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbach called it “part of Putin’s war propaganda.”
On the first day of the trial, June 26, the journalist appeared with a shaved head and a smile in the glass booth reserved for the accused. He was not allowed to speak, but gestured to people he knew inside the courtroom.
Currently, he can only communicate with his family and friends through letters that are read and censored by the prison administration. In the correspondence, the journalist says he is in good spirits and resigned to the possible punishment.
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