The United States they hope for an agreement with the Russia to free the reporter from Wall Street Journal, Evan Gershkovichbut in the meantime the journalist appeared before the court of Yekaterinburg where the trial against him for espionage began, the first Western journalist to end up in handcuffs on this charge since the time ofSoviet Union. Gershkovich has been in Russian prisons since March 2023 and to date attempts to convince the Kremlin to free him, although his newspaper continues to maintain that the charges against him are completely fabricated.
The trial will be held behind closed doors. Gershkovich appeared in a glass box in a courtroom, with a shaved head and a dark plaid shirt. The accredited press had brief access to the courtroom before the trial began. Gershkovich, who also worked for theAfp in Moscow from 2020 to 2022, is accused of having collected sensitive information on behalf of the CIA about one of the country’s main arms manufacturers, the tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod.
From the United States they assure that the efforts to bring him home are continuing: “We continue to work for the release of Evan Gershkovich – said the spokesperson of the American National Security Council, John Kirby, in a briefing with a small group of journalists – We are doing everything we can.” The official then added that the reporter “he’s not a spy” and is instead “used as commodity of exchange” from Moscow. “We want both Evan and Paul (Whelan, ed) know that we all care deeply about their well-being and that this administration will continue to do everything we can to bring them home.”
Moscow’s position is more cautious than that of the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskovmade it known that we cannot speak at the moment of signs of a possible exchange of prisoners that would lead to the journalist’s release because the exchange of prisoners is a topic that “love the silence“: “Now, as before, we cannot speak of any signals. We can only repeat that this topic loves silence,” Peskov said, arguing that we should wait for the court’s ruling. But the hypothesis of an exchange is far from being unfounded: in an interview a few months ago, Putin has hinted that he is willing to free Gershkovich in exchange for the release of Vadim Krasikovan alleged former Russian intelligence agent detained in Germany on charges of killing a former commander of Chechen separatists. And in this regard, the references of the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister seem clear, Sergey Ryabkovto contacts with the American administration: “We have repeatedly underlined that the American administration, which shows so much interest and so much activity in relation to the fate” of the journalist Wall Street Journal, “has yet to seriously consider the signals that, as I understand it, he has received in Washington through appropriate channels. They should not ignore them, as they usually do, but think about the essence of these signals. Maybe then something will become clearer to them.”
