Russian court convicts journalist Evan Gershkovich, imposes 16-year sentence

After a closed trial with secret evidence, a Russian court on Friday convicted American journalist Evan Gershkovich of espionage – charges that the U.S. government said were wholly fabricated – and sentenced him to 16 years in a maximum security penal colony, according to Russian state media.

Gershkovich was the first American journalist arrested in Russia since the Cold War and his case has grave implications for press freedoms.

The trial proceeded with unusual swiftness – suggesting potential developments in negotiations for a prisoner exchange. Trials for espionage in Russia typically take months.

Gershkovich’s arrest in March 2023 seemed to mark a brazen new chapter in hostage diplomacy, by which the Kremlin detains foreigners on minor, or even baseless, charges to then use them to negotiate exchanges for Russians convicted and imprisoned for serious crimes in the West.

Senior Russian and U.S. officials have said that talks about an exchange involving Gershkovich are underway but, according to Kremlin policy, would only proceed once the trial was over.

The secrecy of the trial and arguments means that the evidence presented against Gershkovich faced no public scrutiny and may never be disclosed. The prosecution on Friday had requested an 18-year prison term on Friday, close to the 20-year maximum.

President Biden said in a statement that Gershkovich was targeted because he was an American and a journalist and sentenced to 16 years despite having committed no crime.

“We are pushing hard for Evan’s release and will continue to do so,” Biden said, describing Gershkovich as a “hostage.”

“As I have long said and as the U.N. also concluded, there is no question that Russia is wrongfully detaining Evan.”

In Russia’s highly politicized legal system, where the courts routinely are used to jail journalists, democracy advocates, human rights activists and political opponents of the government, Gershkovich’s conviction had appeared inevitable since his arrest, but supporters and friends nonetheless expressed their shock.

“Russia has just sentenced an innocent man to 16 years in a high security prison,” Pjotr Sauer, a correspondent for the Guardian and close friend of Gershkovich tweeted on X. “I have no words to describe this farce. Let’s get Evan out of there.”

In a joint statement, the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Almar Latour, and editor in chief, Emma Tucker, called for an end to Gershkovich’s ordeal, after his wrongful arrest in March last year.

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” the statement said. “We will continue to do everything possible to press for Evan’s release and to support his family.”

Video published by Russia news outlet Vedemosti showed the judge rapidly reading the judgment, conviction and sentence, as Gershkovich, clad in a black T-shirt, stood in a glass box in the courtroom, his head shaven.

Journalists were admitted only at the beginning before evidence was presented, and at the end for the reading of the conviction and sentence. An armed security agent wearing a black face mask stood nearby.

Gershkovich, his employer the Wall Street Journal and the State Department have all strongly denied the accusation that he was working for the CIA. His conviction was widely expected.

The 32-year-old, who was accredited as a journalist by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, was detained while on a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg and accused of spying. He pleaded not guilty.

A conviction would at least open the possibility that Gershkovich could be released if the United States can reach a deal with Russia.

The second day of the trial, at the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, was moved forward to Thursday from Aug. 13 at the request of Gershkovich’s defense team, according to the court.

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

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the hearing was closed because it was a sensitive case. Russian legal rights activists, however, have reported that the number of cases closed to the public has increased dramatically since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“You know that the charges there concern espionage,” Peskov said. “Therefore this is a very, very sensitive domain, and therefore, the judge has chosen a closed-door format,” Peskov said during a phone call with journalists. He declined to comment on the possibility of an exchange.

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.”

Fueling the sense that the result was a political inevitability, senior Russian officials immediately denounced the journalist after his arrest in March last year. Within hours, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had proclaimed that his work in Yekaterinburg had “nothing to do with journalism” and Kremlin spokesman Peskov insisted that Gershkovich had been “caught red-handed.” Neither offered evidence.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Russia had “irrefutable evidence” that the reporter had spied and claimed that the use of journalists as spies “at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, is a tradition.” But Lavrov also confirmed that Russian and U.S. intelligence services were in contact on the possibility of an exchange.

In February, President Vladimir Putin indicated he would be willing to exchange Gershkovich for a “patriot” who had “eliminated a Russian bandit” in a European capital, an apparent reference to Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, associated with Russia’s Federal Security Service. Krasikov was convicted of murder in Germany for fatally shooting a former Chechen rebel commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, in broad daylight in a Berlin park in 2019.

Last month, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was awaiting a response from Washington to its exchange offer. He said “the ball is in the United States’ court. We are waiting for their response to the ideas that were presented to them.”

Gershkovich’s conviction is likely to have a further chilling effect on the work of foreign journalists in Russia. Many media organizations pulled their correspondents out after his arrest.

Gershkovich is the first American journalist arrested in Russia for alleged spying since 1986, during the Cold War, when Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, was detained by the Soviet security service. Daniloff was held for 13 days before being freed without facing trial in exchange for Gennadi Zakharov, who had been arrested by the FBI in New York for spying in a sting operation.

The United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions this month called on Russia to free Gershkovich without a trial and to pay him compensation. It concluded that, “There is a striking lack of any factual or legal substantiation provided by the authorities of the Russian Federation for the espionage charges” against him.

His arrest was “designed to punish his reporting” on Russia’s war against Ukraine, “lacked a legal basis and is arbitrary,” the U.N. working group said.

Associates of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in jail in Russia in February, said that there was nearly an agreement that month on a deal exchanging Krasikov for Navalny and two Americans.

That exchange probably would have involved Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year jail term in Russia after being convicted in 2020 of spying.

Whelan, 54, has spent more than five and a half years in prison in Russia, having been overlooked in two previous exchange deals.

In his statement President Biden said that since taking office his highest priority had been seeking the release of Gershkovich, Whelan, “and all Americans wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad.”

But some critics have faulted Biden for putting far more emphasis on the American WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was convicted in Moscow of drug smuggling in August 2022, and freed in an exchange that December for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker.

Former Marine Trevor Reed, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was freed in April 2022 in exchange for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been jailed in the United States for drug smuggling.

According to his friends and family, Gershkovich, the son of Soviet-era émigrés, fell in love with Russia when he moved there in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times, a prominent local outlet that pulled out of Russia after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He later worked for Agence France-Presse and joined The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau at the beginning of 2022.

He grew up eating Russian comfort food prepared by his mother Ella Milman and watching classic Soviet-era cartoons. Friends and colleagues describe his open, friendly manner, his passion for reporting and his unerring ability to connect with the people that he meets.

Since Gershkovich’s arrest, the Wall Street Journal has run a campaign to keep his story in the public eye, promoting the hashtag #FreeEvan and running events such as #CookForEvan, encouraging supporters to prepare his favorite dishes and tell his story as a food enthusiast and a great cook who loves to entertain friends.