Russia Convicts Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich Of Espionage

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was convicted Friday of espionage and sentenced to 16 years on charges that his employer and the U.S. have rejected as fabricated.

The conclusion of his swift and secretive trial in the country’s highly politicized legal system perhaps cleared the way for a prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.

When the judge in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court asked Gershkovich if he understood the verdict, he said yes.

Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg and accused of spying for the U.S., and has been behind bars ever since.

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 has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.

Closing arguments took place behind closed doors at the trial, where Gershkovich did not admit any guilt, according to the court’s press service.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. — the first American journalist to be accused of espionage since the Cold War.

Gershkovich was in court for a second straight day Friday for the closed proceedings, where officials said prosecutors requested an 18-year sentence in a high-security prison.

Unlike the trial’s opening on June 26 in Yekaterinburg and previous hearings in Moscow in which reporters were allowed to see