Russia sentences US journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years

New York, July 19, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns as outrageous a Russian judge’s decision on Friday to jail U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich for 16 years on fabricated espionage charges. 

“Russia’s decision to jail Evan Gershkovich for 16 years on sham charges is outrageous,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Journalists are not pawns in geopolitical games. It’s time to stop hostage diplomacy and free him immediately.”

Gershkovich’s closed-door trial started on June 26 in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. A second hearing took place on July 18, when the court announced that it had completed its judicial investigation. The next day, the court heard arguments from both sides, and a judge handed down an 16-year prison term against the journalist.

Gershkovich, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, has been jailed in Russia since the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested him on espionage charges on March 29, 2023, while he was on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. A June 2024 indictment accused Gershkovich of collecting “secret information” for the CIA on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region. The journalist, his outlet, and the U.S. government have all denied the accusations and the U.S. State Department has designated him “wrongfully detained.”   

“He did nothing wrong. Russian authorities have failed to present evidence of a crime or justify Evan’s continued detention,” the U.S. Embassy in Russia said in statement on Thursday.

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” said Almar Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Emma Tucker, editor in chief of the publication, in a statement on Friday.

Russia was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1, 2023.

(Editor’s note: This report has been updated since its initial publication.)