Who is Evan Gershkovich, the WSJ journalist accused of being a spy

Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist for the Wall Street Journal - who could be freed in the coming hours in the exchange of nine prisoners between Russia and the United States, which is considered imminent - had been sentenced by a Russian court on 20 July to 16 years in hard prison, having been found guilty on charges of espionage. Since the case concerns information 'that constitutes state secrets,' the Ria Novosti news agency reported, 'the trial took place behind closed doors.

Gershkovich, 32 years old, an American citizen who had been living in Moscow for six years and speaks fluent Russian, was accredited as a foreign journalist at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was arrested in Yekaterinburg on 29 March 2023: caught 'red-handed', the FSB security services had claimed. According to them, the American journalist was working on behalf of the CIA, collecting confidential information on the activities of Uràlvagonzavod, a tank manufacturer in the Sverdlovsk region.

The correspondent did not recognise the accusation, which the US government, as well as the New York newspaper, had also described as false, repeating for months: journalism is not a crime, Evan was only doing his job. But the sentence did not take anyone by surprise: acquittals are a very rare event in Russia.

It is, however, widely believed that Gershkovich is a political pawn created by the Kremlin as a bargaining chip, and Vladimir Putin himself has made it clear on several occasions that he is interested in a deal with Washington: the man he wants in exchange for one or more American 'pawns' would be Vadim Krasikov, an FSB operative serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight in a Berlin park in 2019.

To get him back, the Russian president would even have been willing to release Aleksej Navalny, who died in prison on 16 February. Serghej Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, had also confirmed in recent days that 'contacts' were underway between Moscow and Washington concerning Gershkovich. A confirmation of a coming agreement could indeed come from the fact that the conclusion of the trial, scheduled for mid-August, had suddenly been brought forward.