(LONDON) — The espionage trial of The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich resumed on Thursday, proceeding behind closed doors in a remote Russian courtroom after Washington and Moscow officials each raised the potential for the journalist to be part of an international prisoner exchange.
Gershkovich’s court date had been moved forward from August 13 after a request from his defense team, Grainne McCarthy, an international editor at the Journal, told staff in an email on Wednesday.
“The process remains opaque but what we do know is that the sooner this is over, the better,” McCarthy wrote in the email, which was shared with ABC News. “Evan cannot be freed soon enough.”
The trial of Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American, began in June behind closed doors in Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, a city hundreds of miles from Moscow. A second closed-door hearing began Thursday morning. U.S. officials accused the Kremlin of using the case “to achieve its political objectives.”
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the Sverdlovsk region, where Russian officials claimed he was collecting secrets on the “production and repair of military equipment” for the CIA. The indictment against Gershkovich was approved by prosecutors in June, sending the case to the regional court for trial.
Prosecutors began at the June 26 hearing to lay out their evidence against the journalist. Whatever evidence Russia has against the journalist hasn’t been publicly released, according to U.S. officials. The trial amounted to “a performance put on by Russian authorities to justify their repression of journalists and independent voices,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in June.
“Russia should stop using individuals like Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan as bargaining chips,” Miller said, referring to a Marine veteran separately detained in Russia. “They should both be released immediately.”
During a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addressed Gershkovich’s detention, telling Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Americans wrongfully detained in Russia should be released.
“We will not rest until Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich come home, and Russia has ceased this barbaric practice of holding human pawns once and for all,” she said on social media afterward.
Lavrov following the meeting said that using journalists for intelligence gathering was “absolutely natural,” adding that Russia has “irrefutable evidence that Gershkovich was engaged in espionage.” But he also said an international prisoner exchange may be possible, echoing what Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said.
“The intelligence services of the two countries, by agreement between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden back in June 2021, have been in contact to see if someone can be exchanged for someone else,” Lavrov said.
Russia and the United States carried out similar high-profile swaps in 2022 when WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, and a former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, was traded for a pilot convicted of drug smuggling.
Russia has maintained that discussions about trades for Gershkovich can only start in earnest after the trial is over, Brian D. Taylor, a Syracuse University political science professor who serves as director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, told ABC News.
“So the quicker the trial and the inevitable verdict, the quicker they can offer Evan as a piece in a possible trade,” Taylor said.
Miller, of the State Department, said in June that the U.S. continued to negotiate for Whelan’s and Gershkovich’s releases in private discussions, including putting a “significant” offer on the table months earlier.
“We shouldn’t have to do that. They should both be released immediately, but we will continue our efforts,” he said. “Those have been happening before Evan’s trial, they will continue during the trial. And should he be convicted — which, of course, he will be, it’s not a free trial — they will continue after the trial. But we want to see him returned home immediately.”
ABC News’ Mike Levine, Will Gretsky, Joe Simonetti and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
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