A Moscow court has extended Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s jail time till at least June 30.
The U.S. citizen has been in jail on espionage charges since March 2023, while he was on a reporting trip. The photos, which were released by Russian officials, shows Gershkovich in a black shirt.
Gershkovich’s employer and the U.S. government have refuted Russian allegations.
Gershkovich was arrested from Yekaterinburg in the eastern part of the country. Till date, authorities have not mentioned what evidence they have to support the espionage charges. Currently, Gershkovich is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.
The U.S. ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy attended the court hearing and reiterated that “the accusations against Evan are categorically untrue.”
“They are not a different interpretation of circumstances. They are fiction,” Tracy told reporters outside of the courthouse. “No justification for Evan’s continued detention, and no explanation as to why Evan doing his job as a journalist constituted a crime. Evan’s case is not about evidence, due process or rule of law. It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends.”
Analysts have pointed out that Moscow may be using jailed Americans as bargaining chips in soaring U.S.-Russian tensions over the Kremlin’s military operation in Ukraine. If recently incidents are anything to go by, at least two U.S. citizens arrested in Russia in recent years — including WNBA star Brittney Griner — have been exchanged for Russians jailed in the U.S.
Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since September 1986, when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. Daniloff was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s U.N. mission who was arrested by the FBI, also on spying charges.
With inputs from Associated Press
