Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist with the Wall Street Journal, appeared in a court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on Wednesday, in the first espionage case involving a foreign journalist since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Gershkovich appeared for the trial in a glass cage, his head shaven clean, wearing a black-and-blue plaid shirt. The hearing, which is being held behind closed doors, will focus on Moscow’s charges that the reporter acted as a United States agent who “collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex” while on a reporting trip in March last year. He denies any wrongdoing. If found guilty, Gershkovich could face up to 20 years in prison, Russian state-run news agency TASS said.
