A Moscow court on Tuesday extended the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for at least three months, ordering him to remain behind bars until June 30 while he awaits trial on espionage charges that the U.S. government and press rights groups have denounced as bogus.
Mr. Gershkovich, 32, was arrested on March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. He is being held at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, the site of countless tortures and executions of prisoners during the Soviet era.
The court proceedings were closed to outsiders because they dealt with classified matters, Russian officials said.
“This verdict to further prolong Evan’s detention feels particularly painful, as this week marks one year since Evan was arrested and wrongfully detained in Yekaterinburg simply for doing his job as a journalist,” U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said outside the Moscow City Court following the order extending his detention.
The Wall Street Journal and the Biden administration have both strongly denied that Mr. Gershkovich, a veteran correspondent, was a spy. The communications arm of the Russian Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, alleged that the reporter, “acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
U.S. officials have staunchly denied the Russian version of events. Ambassador Tracy said the allegations aren’t a “different interpretation of circumstances, they are fiction.”
She said the Russian government has yet to present evidence to substantiate its accusations against The Journal reporter or any justification for his continued pretrial detention.
“Evan’s case is not about evidence, due process, or the rule of law,” Ambassador Tracy said. “It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends, as the Kremlin is doing in the case of Paul Whelan.”
Mr. Whelan is a former U.S. Marine sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020 on espionage charges that he has vehemently denied. The State Department has declared him wrongfully detained, as they did in Mr. Gershkovich’s case, and the U.S. government has tried to negotiate deals to bring both men home.
Ambassador Tracy said the Wall Street Journal reporter has displayed “remarkable resilience and strength” in the face of the grim situation he is in.
“But it is time for the Russian government to let [him] go,” she said. “If the Kremlin has any desire to salvage Russia’s integrity and international esteem, they should do what is right and release Evan and Paul immediately.”