CNN
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Evan Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since the Cold War, was convicted of espionage in a Russian court and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a case that the U.S. government, Gershkovich’s newspaper and supporters have denounced as a false verdict.
The Yekaterinburg court announced the guilty verdict and sentence shortly after 3 p.m. local time (8 a.m. Eastern Time) on Friday.
The court heard closing arguments, with Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, 32, making his closing statement behind closed doors Friday morning.
The swift resolution of the case came just weeks after Gershkovich appeared for the first time behind a glass cage with a freshly shaved head at the start of his trial on June 26. He stood that day with his arms folded, occasionally smiling and waving to reporters.
The speed of the trial has raised questions about whether the Kremlin intends to use him as part of a prisoner swap deal with the United States, but asked about the case in a conference call on Friday before the verdict was announced, spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment.
Moscow reaffirmed in June that talks were underway about a possible prisoner swap for Gershkovich, but Peskov reiterated that such discussions were taking place in “absolute silence” to avoid complicating the issue.
Gershkovich was arrested during a trip to Yekaterinburg while working for the Journal in March 2023 and was subsequently accused of being a CIA spy, though Russian authorities have so far not offered any public evidence to support the allegations.
Within two weeks of his arrest in March 2023, the U.S. State Department found he had been unlawfully detained and called for his immediate release.
“This shameful false conviction comes after Evan was wrongfully detained, separated from family and friends, banned from reporting and spent 478 days in prison simply for carrying out his duties as a journalist,” Gershkovich’s employer said in a statement after Friday’s verdict.
“We continue to do all we can to seek Evan’s release and support his family,” Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker continued in a statement.
“Journalism is not a crime and we will not rest until he is released. This must end now,” he added.
Speaking at the UN Security Council on Friday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield also addressed Gershkovich’s case, saying: “Let me start with the news coming out of Russia this morning: Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in prison. He has committed no crime. He is being punished because he is a journalist and he is an American. Simple as that.”
The verdict has not yet taken effect and the defense has 15 days to appeal, Judge Andrey Mineev said in handing down the ruling. The court also ordered Gershkovich to pay 6,708 rubles ($77) in legal costs and to destroy some of his personal belongings, including his iPhone and notepad.
The judge said the time Gershkovich had already spent in custody since March last year would also be counted towards his sentence.
After his arrest, Gershkovich was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, where he spent all day in a cramped cell, before being transferred to Yekaterinburg, a city in the Urals more than 1,100 miles east of Moscow. His parents told the Journal in an interview that he spent his time writing letters to friends and family, adding that he was only allowed one hour a day to go for walks.
Gershkovich, the U.S. government and the WSJ strongly deny the allegations against him.
U.S. and Western officials have accused Russia of using Gershkovich and other imprisoned foreigners as bargaining chips in a prisoner swap.
One high-profile swap in 2022 saw US basketball star Brittney Griner traded for arms dealer Viktor Bout, but Russia refused to release another jailed American, Paul Whelan, because it wanted a former Russian domestic intelligence colonel in return.
In an interview with right-wing US media personality Tucker Carlson in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that “an agreement could be reached” with the US for Gershkovich’s release, referring to the case of a Russian convicted of carrying out an assassination in Berlin in 2019.
The trial of Mr. Gershkovich, the American-born son of parents who defected to the United States during the Soviet era, has highlighted how Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine has damaged relations between Moscow and Washington.
In their indictment, Russian prosecutors said Gershkovich “collected secret information” about Russian tank factories “at the direction of the CIA” and “using meticulous, subversive methods”.
This story has been updated.
