Russia sends case of WSJ’s Gershkovich to court

Evan Gershkovich

Russian prosecutors finalized the espionage indictment against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who will be tried in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, reports Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times.

Nechepurenko writes, “The Russian authorities have suggested that they could be open to a prisoner swap for Mr. Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, but only after a verdict is handed down.

“The detention of Mr. Gershkovich, the first American journalist arrested on a spying charge since the end of the Cold War, highlighted the extent to which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has damaged relations between Moscow and Washington.

“In a statement, the prosecutors said they had determined and confirmed that ‘under instructions from the C.I.A.’ and ‘using secrecy methods,’ Mr. Gershkovich ‘was collecting secret information’ about a factory that produces tanks and other weapons in the Sverdlovsk region.

“Mr. Gershkovich, along with his employer and the United States government, has denied the charge against him.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.