A court docket spokesperson mentioned that the court docket’s examination of the proof within the case had concluded on the second day of the trial, with arguments from the protection and prosecution due on Friday, the Interfax information company reported.
The method was remarkably swift for an espionage trial, which regularly run to many months in Russia. Native Yekaterinburg outlet It’s My Metropolis reported that the prosecution would make its sentencing request on Friday, suggesting an inevitable responsible verdict might observe shortly.
“We’ve obtained irrefutable proof corroborating that Gershkovich was concerned in some espionage actions,” Lavrov mentioned Wednesday at a information convention on the United Nations in New York, the place Russia is at the moment chairing the Safety Council.
Gershkovich, the Wall Road Journal, and the Biden administration have vehemently denied that there’s any foundation to Russia’s allegations and that he has basically been taken hostage. Russia beforehand has arrested Individuals, similar to WNBA star Brittney Griner, on what seem like minor prices, after which used them as bargaining chips to win the discharge of Russians imprisoned for critical crimes within the West.
The trial this week on the Sverdlovsk Regional Court docket in Yekaterinburg was moved up from Aug. 13 on the request of Gershkovich’s protection crew, in response to the court docket. The primary listening to was held late final month.
A swift completion of the trial might open the way in which for motion on a prisoner trade. Lavrov on Wednesday confirmed that negotiations over an trade for Gershkovich have been underway, after Russian officers beforehand have mentioned no commerce can be potential till after his trial is full. Greater than 99 % of Russian felony prosecutions end in convictions.
“The intelligence companies of the 2 nations … have been concerned in contacts wanting into the opportunity of an trade,” Lavrov mentioned. “Everybody is aware of that this matter must be mentioned calmly, confidentially though it’s continuously launched into the general public area by American journalists, which isn’t serving to. However the contacts are ongoing.”
Lavrov’s assertion of “irrefutable proof” — whereas not offering any — echoed the remarks of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who claimed after Gershkovich’s arrest final 12 months that he had been “caught red-handed.”
Gershkovich, 32, who was accredited by Russia’s International Ministry, was detained in March 2023 on a reporting journey to Yekaterinburg and accused of espionage. He has pleaded not responsible.
Russian prosecutors allege that the journalist was working on the orders of the CIA, gathering secret details about Uralvagonzavod, a state-owned machine-building manufacturing facility in Nizhny Tagil, about 87 miles southeast of Yekaterinburg. The manufacturing facility manufactures tanks for Russia’s struggle on Ukraine.
The listening to was closed, as is customary in Russian trials in circumstances of espionage or treason, that means that the character of the proof offered by prosecutors towards Gershkovich in all probability won’t ever be publicly identified. Gershkovich faces a jail time period of as much as 20 years if convicted.
Vyacheslav Vegner, a member of the Sverdlovsk area’s Legislative Meeting, appeared as a witness within the case on Thursday and was questioned by each side, he advised Interfax information company, which supplied no particulars on what he mentioned or whether or not he was a prosecution or protection witness. He mentioned he had spoken to Gershkovich throughout the journalist’s reporting journey to Yekaterinburg.
Russian media outlet SOTAvision quoted Vegner saying that Gershkovich requested him if the profile of the military-industrial vegetation in Yekaterinburg was altering, what number of shifts they labored and whether or not there was enough personnel.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow mentioned final month that the case towards Gershkovich was “not about proof, procedural norms, or the rule of regulation. It’s in regards to the Kremlin utilizing Americans to realize its political goals.”
On the U.N., Lavrov mentioned: “The usage of journalists for intelligence-gathering functions, a minimum of within the Anglo-Saxon world, is a convention.”
Earlier than Gershkovich’s trial opened in Yekaterinburg on June 26, Wall Road Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker described the fees as baseless, saying they might “inevitably result in a bogus conviction for an harmless man.”
Former president Donald Trump has acknowledged that he would use his private relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to have Gershkovich freed shortly after the November U.S. election, during which he expects to be elected president.
Gershkovich’s arrest, in addition to these of a number of different Individuals, has raised the specter of a renewal of “hostage diplomacy,” when nations arrest harmless residents to be used in exchanges or to ship pointed political messages.
One other American jailed for spying, former U.S. Marine and company safety government Paul Whelan, 54, has spent greater than 5½ years behind bars in Russia, having been handed over in two earlier prisoner trade offers with Russia.
These occurred when Griner, convicted in Moscow of drug possession in August 2022, was freed in an trade that December for the Russian arms supplier Viktor Bout, and former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was freed in April 2022 in trade for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was jailed in the US for drug smuggling.
The State Division has declared each Gershkovich and Whelan to be unlawfully detained by Russia, elevating the efforts to free them. When the trial began, Peskov mentioned that the fees towards Gershkovich resonated in the US, “however it isn’t so resonant in our nation.”
Russia has additionally arrested a Russian American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor at U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty primarily based in Prague and charged her with failing to register as a international agent and spreading faux information in regards to the Russia-Ukraine struggle. Kurmasheva and RFE/RL reject the fees as false.
In February, a court docket in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Area, within the Far East, convicted German journalist Björn Blaschke from radio broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), on prices of discrediting the Russian army, over a social media put up in 2022. Blaschke left the nation after being fined and launched from custody.
Russia’s Heart for Combating Extremism for the Jewish Autonomous Area mounted the fees over a put up by Blaschke on X on Aug. 2, 2022, in German, which acknowledged: “Russia’s assault on Ukraine exacerbates the state of affairs: rising world costs for wheat and gasoline additionally affected Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.”
Blaschke pleaded not responsible and testified that the put up was a quote from a Kenyan man, posted throughout a reporting journey to the east African nation.
Russian Federal Safety Service brokers routinely search the telephones of international journalists touring to Russia.
A Moscow court docket on Thursday sentenced American musician Michael Travis Leake to 13 years in a strict regime penal colony after convicting him of tried drug trafficking. Leake was the lead vocalist for a Moscow-based band, Lovi Noch, and produced music for Russian bands.
He was arrested in June 2023 and accused of organizing the gross sales of medicine to younger individuals; he has denied the fees.
