Gershkovich was detained while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg in March 2023 and accused of spying for the United States.
FILE - Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the First Appeals Court of General Jurisdiction in Moscow, Russia , April 23, 2024.
Gershkovich is accused of "gathering secret information" on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility in the Sverdlovsk region that produces and repairs military equipment, the Prosecutor General's office said in a statement, revealing for the first time the details of the accusations against him.
The reporter, his employer and the U.S. government denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained. Plant foreman Igor Kholmanskih appeared on Putin's annual phone-in program in December 2011 and denounced mass protests occurring in Moscow at the time as a threat to "stability," proposing that he and his colleagues travel to the capital to help suppress the unrest. A week later, Putin appointed Kholmanskikh to be his envoy in the region.
"And they certainly should be decided only on the basis of reciprocity," he added in an allusion to a potential prisoner swap.He 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.
Russia Espionage Trial U.S. Yekaterinburg Uralvagonzavod Prisoner Swap
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