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The only surprising thing is that the guilty verdict against Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal correspondent arrested last year in Russia on trumped-up espionage charges, was pronounced so quickly. The accusation itself is a farce. No evidence was ever made public, the hearings were held in secret, and Mr. Gershkovich was not allowed to say anything in public about the case.
Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest, trial, and sentencing serve President Vladimir Putin’s purpose of silencing any fair reporting coming out of Russia about the invasion of Ukraine and making Russians even more suspicious of talking about the war with foreigners.
Independent Russian media outlets have been almost completely shut down and their sleuths imprisoned or forced to leave the country, leaving foreign correspondents among the few remaining sources of independent information in Russia. The last article published by Mr. Gershkovich before his arrest, on March 29, 2023, titled “The Russian economy is beginning to fall apart,” precisely the kind of important independent journalism that demands situations of Mr. Gershkovich’s claims . Putin said that a strong and colorful Russia is fighting for fair justice.
Russian prosecutors claimed that Gershkovich, on instructions from Washington, had used “thorough conspiratorial methods” to download “secret information” about Uralvagonzavod, a Russian arms factory near Yekaterinburg, where he had been arrested and tried.
The lifestyle of this large shopping complex is well known, however, the rate of espionage has allowed Russian prosecutors to keep the entire process secret, while also fueling Putin’s propaganda about United States and European efforts to destabilize Russia.
Putin’s repression of free speech, especially in the war in Ukraine, is relentless. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia has the fourth-highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world, with at least 22 of them detained, adding Mr. Gershkovich and Alsou Kurmasheva, who have dual US-Russian citizenship and are editors of the newspaper funded by the US government, Radio Europe Libre/Radio Liberté.
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