Russian Court Extends Detention of WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich – A Moscow court has prolonged the custody of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist detained on espionage allegations in late March. In a short session on Thursday, the court directed that Gershkovich should stay incarcerated until November 30th, as per reports from Russian news agencies.
Originally, his pre-trial detention was set to conclude next week. He is currently held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison and might receive a maximum sentence of 20 years if proven guilty. The investigation phase of the case is ongoing, and there’s no trial date established. The hearing that took place on Thursday was not open to the public.
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Evan Gershkovich, aged 31, became the first American journalist to be held in Russia on espionage charges since the cold war’s conclusion. His detention occurred in Ekaterinburg, a city in the Urals region, at the end of March while he was on a reporting assignment.
Russia’s FSB security service alleges that he was gathering classified information concerning the nation’s military-industrial complex. Both Gershkovich and the Wall Street Journal have refuted these accusations. In early August, Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Russia, made her third visit to Gershkovich and observed that he seemed to be in decent health despite the difficult circumstances.
There has been widespread speculation that Russia apprehended Gershkovich with the intention of exchanging him for Russian intelligence agents or other individuals of interest to Moscow who have been arrested in Western nations. However, discussions about a potential exchange have made limited progress thus far. US officials have indicated that they view a prisoner swap with Moscow as the most probable way to secure Gershkovich’s release, as they believe he is being detained unjustly.
In the previous month, President Joe Biden of the United States expressed his earnest intention to pursue a prisoner exchange for Gershkovich and stated that the process was already in progress. The Kremlin has also indicated that it might be receptive to a potential prisoner swap involving Gershkovich, but emphasized that any negotiations must occur privately.
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According to The Journal’s previous report, it was stated that Putin directly oversaw Gershkovich’s detention, receiving video updates both before and after his apprehension by the FSB’s counterintelligence division. An additional American, Paul Whelan, who holds a corporate security role in Michigan, has been incarcerated in Russia since December 2018 on allegations of espionage that both his family and the US government have denounced as baseless.
