Jakub Gazda | 25 June 2024

Summary

• US journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 by the Federal Security Services (FSB) in Yekaterinburg Russia.

• Gershkovich has been detained on espionage charges, the first such case since the end of the Cold War, carrying a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

• The first court date for Gershkovich’s closed-door trial was set for 26th June 2024 in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.

Evan Gershkovich, 32, a child Soviet emigrés and a fluent Russian speaker, had been working at the time of his arrest as a Russia correspondent for the Washington Street journal. It was during his work in Russia that Gershkovich was arrested for allegedly collecting secret information from the military production conglomerate SC NPK Uralvagonzavod, on behalf of the American CIA. The US government has denied the accusations, calling them ridiculous, while President Biden has called Gershkovich’s detention “totally illegal”.

Despite the denial of the charges by the US government and Gershkovich himself,  several appeal attempts in the last year had failed to see the journalist leaving jail, instead, the Russian prosecutors remain adamant on the link between the Gershkovich and the CIA.

Gershkovich’s imprisonment of over a year has shed light on the barter relationship developed by the two states, the US & Russia, since the early days of the Cold War, when alleged or confirmed intelligence officers were traded between the two. While the collapse of the Soviet Union saw an almost total end to such exchanges, it can be argued that since the deterioration of economic and diplomatic channels caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin regime has returned to the time-tested form of securing important assets from imprisonment in the US and its allies. The most recent example of such an exchange is the trade of the American female basketball player Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. Signs that the Kremlin may want to pursue a similar deal have appeared earlier this year, with Vladimir Putin hinting at the possibility in his February 2024 interview with American political commentator Tucker Carlson. Reports suggest that the Gershkovich could be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, who is currently imprisoned in Germany for the Kremlin-ordered assassination of an exiled Chechen commander.

Forecast

• Short-term

  • It is unlikely that any form of prisoner exchange will occur before the start of Gershkovich’s June trial. Therefore, based on previous espionage trials in Russia, Gershkovich is looking at four months to a year of court proceedings, following which he will most likely be found guilty of the charges against him.

• Medium-term

  • Following the likely guilty conviction and facing 20 years in a Russian prison, a prisoner exchange for Gershkovich will become more likely, especially considering the maltreatment prisoners suffer at the hands of the Russian Security services.

• Long-term

  • Considering that the Russian Federation has lost significant diplomatic and economic leverage since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, and has, as a result, become more reliant on coercive forms of reaching its political goals, more arrests of foreign journalists are likely to occur. Therefore, it is highly likely foreign primarily US-based media houses are going to severely limit the number of foreign, notably  American, reporters in Russia to guarantee their safety from future prosecution.