US reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced by a Russian court to 16 years in a strict penal colony on Friday, July 19, after a trial that has widely been called a sham. The Wall Street Journal reporter was convicted on espionage charges. Gershkovich, his employer and the US government vehemently denied the charges.
The verdict was reached after a closed-door espionage trial in Yekaterinburg, the city where he was arrested in March 2023. Gershkovich, 32, was detained there while on a reporting trip and accused of spying for the US, and has been behind bars ever since.
He was the first US journalist taken into custody on these charges since Nicholas Daniloff in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Gershkovich's arrest shocked foreign journalists in Russia, even though the country has enacted increasingly repressive laws on freedom of speech after sending troops into Ukraine.