American journalist Evan Gershkovich will stand trial in Russia on rates of spying for the CIA, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Gershkovich, a Wall Avenue Journal reporter, was arrested in March 2023 on what quite a few in the West take into consideration to be trumped up rates from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repressive regime.
President Joe Biden has consistently called on Putin to launch Gershkovich, 32, who was arrested in the Ural Mountains metropolis of Yekaterinburg.
After far more than a calendar year in pre-trial detention, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said Thursday that Gershkovich would be sent to the Sverdlovsk Regional Courtroom, in the metropolis in which he was arrested, for trial at an unspecified day.
The prosecutor’s workplace claimed that Gershkovich experienced been charged with espionage following an investigation by Russia’s Federal Security Support, or FSB.
It claimed he experienced “acted on directions from the CIA” and “gathered solution info” about the mass tank company UralVagonZavod “for the production and maintenance of military services devices.”
It additional, “Unlawful steps were carried out by Gershkovich in compliance with careful actions of secrecy.”
Russian authorities have introduced no proof to help their case.
Gershkovich’s situation has develop into a campaigning challenge for journalists and government officials all through the West, who see it emblematic of the war Putin has waged against flexibility of speech the two domestic and foreign.
His employer and U.S. officers have repeatedly turned down the expenses as baseless. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy explained at a listening to in March that “the accusations versus Evan are categorically untrue.”
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