American journalist Evan Gershkovich went on trial behind closed doors in Russia on charges of espionage 15 months after he was arrested in the city of Yekaterinburg.

The 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter appeared in a glass cage in the Yekaterinburg courtroom on Wednesday, with his head shaven clean and wearing a black-and-blue plaid shirt.

Gershkovich is accused by prosecutors of gathering secret information about Uralvagonzavod, a plant manufacturing tanks for Russia’s war in Ukraine, on the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev claimed there was proof that Gershkovich “on the instructions of the CIA … collected secret information about the activities of a defence enterprise about the production and repair of military equipment in the Sverdlovsk region”.

The court said the next hearing will be held on August 13.

The US Embassy in Russia on Wednesday called for Gershkovich’s release and said the “Russian authorities have failed to provide any evidence supporting the charges against him, failed to justify his continued detention, and failed to explain why Evan’s work as a journalist constitutes a crime”.

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Today, a Russian court began closed-door proceedings in the case of Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, who has been wrongfully detained by Russian authorities for more than a year. https://t.co/edWy9MGvPm

— Посольство США в РФ/ U.S. Embassy Russia (@USEmbRu) June 26, 2024

The Journal said the “secret trial” will “offer him few, if any, of the legal protections he would be accorded in the US and other Western countries”.

The reporter, his employer and the United States government vigorously deny the allegations, saying he was just doing his job, with accreditation from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On Tuesday, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, wrote in a letter to readers that Russian judicial proceedings are “unfair to Evan and a continuation of this travesty of justice that already has gone on for far too long”.

Tucker said: “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man.”

If convicted, Gershkovich faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. A verdict could be months away because Russian trials often adjourn for weeks.

Tucker noted that even covering Gershkovich’s trial “presents challenges to us” and other media “over how to report responsibly on the proceedings and the allegations”.

“Let us be very clear, once again: Evan is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal. He was on assignment in Russia, where he was an accredited journalist,” she wrote.

The case, the US Embassy wrote on X, “is not about evidence, procedural norms or the rule of law. It is about the Kremlin using American citizens to achieve its political objectives”.

‘Hostage diplomacy’

The American-born son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, Gershkovich is the first Western journalist to be arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia.

His detention came about a year after President Vladimir Putin pushed through laws that chilled journalists, criminalising criticism of the war in Ukraine and statements seen as discrediting the military.

After his arrest on March 29, 2023, Gershkovich was held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. His appeals for release have been repeatedly rejected.

The proceedings will take place behind closed doors, meaning that the media is excluded and no friends, family members or US embassy staff are allowed in to support him.

Putin has indicated that Russia is open to the idea of a prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich and others, claiming that contacts with the US have taken place, but that they must remain secret.

The US has in turn accused Russia of conducting “hostage diplomacy”.

It has designated Gershkovich and another jailed American, security executive Paul Whelan, arrested in Moscow for espionage in 2018, as “wrongfully detained”, thereby committing the government to assertively seek their release.

In its statement, the US Embassy said Russia should stop using people like Gershkovich and Whelan “as bargaining chips”. “They should both be released immediately,” it said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with a deal with federal prosecutors to close a drawn-out legal saga related to the leaking of military secrets that raised divisive questions about press freedom, national security and the traditional bounds of journalism.

The plea to a single count of conspiring to obtain and disclose information related to the national defense was entered Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific.

Assange said that he believed that the Espionage Act under which he was charged contradicted his First Amendment rights but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication can be unlawful.

“I believe the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances,” he reportedly said in court. 

Under the terms of the deal, Assange is permitted to return to his native Australia without spending any time in an American prison. He had been jailed in the United Kingdom for the last five years, while fighting extradition to the United States.

A conviction could have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence. 

AUSTRALIAN LAWMAKERS SEND LETTER URGING BIDEN TO DROP CASE AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE ON WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY

Screen grab taken from the X account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following his release from prison on Tuesday June 25, 2024. Assange has arrived in Saipan ahead of an expected guilty plea in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will set him free to return home to Australia. (@WikiLeaks, via AP)

WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that Assange founded in 2006, applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”

Federal prosecutors said Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to steal diplomatic cables and military files published in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017 in the final days of his presidency.

Assange has been celebrated by free press advocates as a transparency crusader but heavily criticized by national security hawks who say he put lives at risk and operated far beyond the bounds of journalism.  

SUPPORTERS OF JULIAN ASSANGE RALLY AT JUSTICE DEPT. ON 4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF DETAINMENT

Julian Assange seen boarding an airplane. (Getty Images)

Weeks after the 2010 document cache, Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Assange for allegedly raping a woman and an allegation of molestation. The case was later dropped. Assange has always maintained his innocence. 

In 2012, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there. 

The Ecuadorian government in 2019 allowed the British police to arrest Assange and he remained in custody for the next five years while fighting extradition to the U.S. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.