Russian court rejects US reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention appeal

‘He’s in a combative mood,’ the journalist’s lawyer says. ‘He is ready to defend himself and to show that he is innocent’

A Moscow judge has rejected an appeal from US journalist Evan Gershkovich to be freed from detention before his trial on espionage charges,

Russia’s FSB security service arrested Mr Gershkovich at the end of March on charges that carry a possible 20-year prison sentence. He is the first US journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War.

Mr Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), denies all the charges, which have been widely condemned as politically motivated. He looked calm and smiled as he stood in a glass and metal case before the ruling, wearing a checked shirt, with his arms folded.

Russia’s FSB security service arrested Mr Gershkovich in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg for allegedly collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex. The journalist is being held in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, which was previously run by the KGB during the Soviet era. Traditionally it has been used to hold those suspected of spying and other grave crimes.

His legal team had asked that Mr Gershkovich be freed on bail of 50 million roubles (£492,000) supplied by the WSJ publisher Dow Jones or placed under house arrest, his lawyer Tatiana Nozhkina said.

“He’s in a combative mood,” Ms Nozhkina told reporters outside the court. “He is ready to defend himself and to show that he is innocent.”

Before the hearing got underway, Mr Gershkovich turned around when one of the Russian reporters in the courtroom told him to “Stay strong” and relayed to him that everyone said “Hi”.

A masked man with “FSB” written on his black uniform stood beside the cage as the judge rejected the appeal. The US ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, stood nearby, watching the proceedings with a handful of international and Russian reporters who were admitted to the courtroom before the hearing started.

When asked by the judge if he needed translation, Mr Gershkovich said in Russian that he understood everything. His lawyers said they would appeal the decision.

The Kremlin has claimed Mr Gershkovich was caught “red-handed”. The US has deemed him “wrongfully detained”, his employer and colleagues have said he is innocent, and president Joe Biden has called his detention illegal.

“He is reading a lot in prison – Russian literature in the original Russian,” Ms Nozhkina told Reuters, adding that he was reading Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece War and Peace about the French invasion of Russia in 1812.

Asked about the prison food, Ms Nozhkina said Mr Gershkovich was being given porridge in the mornings and that the food was normal.

Tuesday’s hearing did not address the substance of the charges as the investigation is still in progress.

Elsewhere, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned the US, British and Canadian ambassadors for a dressing down after they condemned the conviction of an opposition politician on treason charges.

A Moscow court jailed Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza – who holds Russian and British passports – for 25 years on Monday after a trial he and the West said was politically motivated. It was the harshest sentence of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The lower house of Russia’s parliament on Tuesday also approved legislation increasing the punishment for treason to life imprisonment and boosting the penalty for terrorism by a number of years. The legislation, which advances to the parliament’s upper house, represents an escalation of the Kremlin’s domestic crackdown.

A sign of that crackdown was felt by imprisoned opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, who his lawyers said faces the prospect of new criminal charges after in effect being forced to break the rules of the maximum security penal colony where he is being held,

Vadim Kobzev said on Twitter that a foul-smelling inmate with poor hygiene had been placed in Mr Navalny’s cell on Monday in a “provocation” while he was doing prison labour, and that Mr Navalny had had no choice on returning but to drag him out. He had then been told he would be charged with thwarting prison authorities, which carries a maximum sentence of five years, Mr Kobzev said.

On the ground in Ukraine, president Volodymyr Zelensky visited troops in the small eastern city of Avdiivka on Tuesday. Avdiivka has been one of the main targets of a Russian winter offensive which was intended to reinvigorate Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, but has made only small territorial advances in the east.

“I have the honour to be here today, to thank you for your service, for defending our land, Ukraine, our families,” he said. “I wish you only victory – this is what I wish for every Ukrainian, this is what is very important to all of us.”

Mr Zelensky has visited troops several times in recent weeks before what is widely expected to be a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Kremlin said Russian president Vladimir Putin also met troops this week, during visits on Monday to Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson and Luhansk regions.

A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Japan also condemned a Russian plan to station shorter-range, so-called tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a Moscow ally which borders Ukraine.

In a communique at the end of a three-day meeting in Japan, G7 foreign ministers said: “Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and its threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are unacceptable.”

“Any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by Russia would be met with severe consequences,” they said.

The G7 groups the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada, which have all imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Reuters