5 months ago
21
Russian prosecutors said Thursday they had sent the case of detained
US reporter
Evan Gershkovich to court after concluding he had been collecting information for the US Central Intelligence Agency about a Russian tank factory. Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29, 2023, in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison after the FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB, said it had caught him "red-handed" trying to obtain military secrets.
Gershkovich and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have flatly denied the charges and the newspaper has repeatedly called for his immediate release.
The White House has called the charges "ridiculous", with Prez Biden calling the detention "totally illegal".
The office of
Russia
's General Prosecutor said in a statement it had approved Gershkovich's criminal indictment and that his case would be heard by a court in Yekaterinburg, where he was originally arrested. It did not say when the case would be heard or whether the
trial
would be closed to the public as is common in such cases.
"The investigation has established and confirmed with documentary evidence that Gershkovich, on the instructions of the
CIA
, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region in March 2023 about the activities of the defence plant NPK Uralvagonzavod JSC on the production and repair of military equipment," the prosecutors' statement said. Prosecutors did not release any documentary evidence to back the charge.
Gershkovich, the first US journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War, is currently being held in pre-trial detention in Moscow and has been the subject of so far fruitless prisoner exchange talks between Moscow and Washington.
The Uralvagonzavod factory, which has been sanctioned by the West, is based in the city of Nizhny Tagil in Russia's Sverdlovsk region and, according to the Russian defence ministry, plays a crucial role in supplying tanks for Moscow's war in Ukraine.
