Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia on espionage charges, has lost his appeal in a Moscow court to be released from pre-trial detention.
In Gershkovich’s first public appearance since his arrest, an appeals court judge on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision to hold him in Lefortovo prison, a notorious facility run by the FSB, Russia’s main security service.
Reporters were allowed to enter the courtroom to film Gershkovich, 31, who stood in the glass cage typically used to hold defendants in Russian criminal proceedings and smiled at friends.
The WSJ said the charges against Gershkovich were baseless, while the US last week declared him wrongfully detained.
Russia has provided no evidence for the charges even though the FSB claimed it caught Gershkovich “red-handed” when it arrested him last month during a reporting trip to the Urals, where many armament factories are located.
Gershkovich, who faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if found guilty, is the first US reporter to be arrested for alleged espionage in Russia since the Cold War and the latest in a string of American citizens detained there in recent years.
Maria Korchagina, a lawyer for Gershkovich, said Dow Jones, the WSJ’s parent company, had offered Rbs50mn ($610,000) in bail to release the reporter on his own recognisance or keep him under house arrest.
“He’s ready to fight, prove he has the right to practise journalism freely and defend himself,” Korchagina told reporters outside the courthouse. “In the hearing, he stated he was not guilty of the acts he is accused of. He is hanging in there and thanks everyone for their support.”
She added that Gershkovich was reading Lev Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, exercising, replying to letters and had grown “apparently very fond of some TV show about cooking in monasteries”.
Courts in Russia routinely side with prosecutors and hold defendants in pre-trial detention, often for years, on little or even no evidence.
Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Russia, attended Gershkovich’s hearing after visiting him in prison on Monday.
“I can only say how troubling it was to see Evan, an innocent journalist, held in these circumstances,” she told reporters. Tracy repeated calls to free Gershkovich as well as Paul Whelan, a former US Marine held on espionage charges in Russia since 2018. “Both men deserve to go home to their families now.”
Russia summoned Tracy as well as her UK and Canadian counterparts on Tuesday after they attended a sentencing hearing for Vladimir Kara-Murza, a UK-Russian dual citizen sentenced to 25 years in jail on charges including treason a day earlier.
On Tuesday, Russia amended its criminal code to make the crime of treason punishable with a maximum sentence of life in prison, up from 20 years.
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said the ambassadors’ comments criticising Kara-Murza’s sentence — which UK ambassador Deborah Bronnert made in Russian, hoping local TV would broadcast them — were “direct interference in Russia’s internal affairs”.
“Attempts to pressure Russia’s government and independent judiciary are doomed to fail,” she said on Monday.
“Traitors and turncoats . . . lauded in the west will get what they deserve. Any attempts . . . to spread discord and hatred in our society will be curtailed decisively and the diplomats involved in this subversive work will be expelled from Russia.”
Additional reporting from Polina Ivanova in London
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