Analysts expect this to be a fast track to a prisoner exchange // The Federal Security Service says it has arrested him in flagrante
▲ Evan Gershkovich, 32, is a Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and is accused of trying to pass classified information from a Russian manufacturer of military equipment to the CIA.Afp Photo
Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, July 20, 2024, p. 22
Moscow. In a closed-door trial that was surprisingly swift, with just three sessions, the Sverdlovsk regional court in the city of Yekaterinburg, the peculiar capital of the Urals that separates the European and Asian parts of Russia, yesterday sentenced American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Moscow correspondent for the newspaper The Wall Street Journalto 16 years in prison in a maximum security prison regime, considering him guilty of espionage.
The Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB) arrested Gershkovich, 32, on March 29, 2023, at the Bukovski Grill restaurant in Yekaterinburg. The journalist had traveled to the Sverdlovsk region to gather information and conduct interviews.
According to one of Gershkovich’s interviewees, municipal deputy Viacheslav Vegner – speaking to the news portal 66.ru, very popular in the Urals – the envoy of The Wall Street Journal He asked him about the attitude of the inhabitants of Russia’s third largest city towards special military operation launched by President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, what ordinary people think about the Wagner mercenary group (owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a disgraced tycoon who ordered a failed rebellion, distanced himself from his protector, President Putin, and died in August 2023 when his private plane crashed) and the reconversion of local industry in times that are not peacetime.
Announcing his arrest, the FSB issued a brief statement accusing Gershkovich of trying to obtain, in the interest of the United States government (it was later leaked that he was referring to the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency), information classified as a state secret about one of the companies of the military-industrial complex in the regionwhich the local press immediately linked to the Uralvagonzavod concern, famous for manufacturing and repairing tanks.
Kremlin spokesmen Dmitry Peskov and Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Maria Zakharova said at the time that the FSB had arrested Gershkovich. in flagrante and? This was not the first case in which the status of a foreign journalist, accredited by the Russian Foreign Ministry, was used to carry out activities that had nothing to do with journalism..
According to his lawyers, the journalist denied the charges and pleaded not guilty at the first session of the trial on June 26, while the prosecution insisted on his guilt and requested yesterday, in the third and final session, a sentence of 18 years of imprisonment, out of the maximum of 20 years stipulated by the Russian Criminal Code for espionage.
Probable exchange
The fact that the Court granted the prosecution’s request and brought forward the second session, which was scheduled for August 13, to Thursday of this week, and that a day later, yesterday, the judge issued his verdict in just four minutes, seems to indicate that there is already progress in the secret negotiation to exchange the journalist with a Russian citizen detained and convicted in the United States or an allied country.
Standard practice shows that Russia agrees to such swaps – such as the most recent one between American basketball player Brittney Griner and Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022 – when the alleged defendants of a serious crime in this country have already been convicted by the courts.
In Gershkovich’s case, the exchange will depend on whether or not his defense files an appeal, which can only postpone the date of his release. From the moment of his arrest, the United States government began to negotiate a possible exchange, but negotiators from both sides have not been able to agree on who to include in the prisoner exchange. I think an understanding can be reached.President Vladimir Putin replied in an interview he gave on February 8 to controversial American journalist Tucker Carlson, who asked him if he was considering an exchange.
Putin acknowledged that there were contacts in this regard, but that such negotiations are effective when they are not made public. He hinted that Russia was interested in exchanging Gershkovich, after his trial, for A patriot who felt it necessary to do justice to a bloody criminal.
The Russian president was apparently referring to an FSB agent, Vadim Krasikov, sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for murdering, in August 2019, in a Berlin park, the former Chechen separatist commander of Georgian origin, Zelimjan Jangoshvili, but there are many other cases of Americans and Russians who could be part of an exchange.
Precedent is created
The Gershkovich case, according to lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov, creates a precedent because it is the first time that Russia has convicted a foreign journalist for espionage. Since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, this had never happened, although correspondents who were not interested were preferred to be expelled. They carried out activities incompatible with their statusFor some time now, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claiming reciprocity, has been known to cancel a journalist’s accreditation and visa, giving them a short period of time to leave the country.
After 478 days behind bars
Before being sentenced on Friday in Yekaterinburg, Gershkovich spent 478 days in pretrial detention in the same Lefortovo prison in Moscow as the weekly’s correspondent US News & World ReportNicholas Daniloff, the former foreign journalist detained by espionageon September 2, 1986, but when the Soviet Union still existed.
Daniloff was never tried. After intense negotiations, he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union without charge on 23 September of that year. On the same date, Gennady Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations who had been arrested in New York three days before Daniloff, returned to Moscow. Dissident Yuri Orlov also travelled to the West as part of the deal.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday he described pantomime of condemnation the one suffered by your correspondent.
This shameful and false conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, unjustly detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist.the paper’s publisher, Almar Latour, and editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said in a statement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called the court decision scandalous and demanded that the Russian authorities Drop these false espionage charges and release Gershkovich immediatelyAt least 22 journalists are currently imprisoned in Russia.