WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich due in Russian court as espionage trial continues

LONDON -- Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is expected on Thursday to appear in court in Russia, as the espionage trial against him continues despite calls from U.S. officials for his immediate release.

Gershkovich's court date was moved forward from August 13 after a request from his defense team, Grainne McCarthy, an international editor at the Journal, told staff in an email on Wednesday.

"The process remains opaque but what we do know is that the sooner this is over, the better," McCarthy wrote in the email, which was shared with ABC News. "Evan cannot be freed soon enough."

The trial of Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American, began in June behind closed doors in Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, a city hundreds of miles from Moscow. U.S. officials accused the Kremlin of using the case "to achieve its political objectives."

Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 while reporting in the Sverdlovsk region, where Russian officials claimed he was collecting secrets on the "production and repair of military equipment" for the CIA. The indictment against Gershkovich was approved by prosecutors in June, sending the case to the regional court for trial.

Prosecutors began at the June 26 hearing to lay out their evidence against the journalist. Whatever evidence Russia has against the journalist hasn't been publicly released, according to U.S. officials. The trial amounted to "a performance put on by Russian authorities to justify their repression of journalists and independent voices," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in June.

"Russia should stop using individuals like Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan as bargaining chips," Miller said, referring to a Marine veteran separately detained in Russia. "They should both be released immediately."

During a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addressed Gershkovich's detention, telling Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Americans wrongfully detained in Russia should be released.

"We will not rest until Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich come home, and Russia has ceased this barbaric practice of holding human pawns once and for all," she said on social media afterward.

Lavrov following the meeting said that using journalists for intelligence gathering was "absolutely natural," adding that Russia has "irrefutable evidence that Gershkovich was engaged in espionage." Russian President Vladimir Putin has made clear that he would trade Gershkovich, most likely as a prison exchange for Russians held in the United States.

Russia and the United States carried out similar high-profile swaps in 2022 when WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a convicted Russian arms trafficker, and a former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, was traded for a pilot convicted of drug smuggling.

Russian officials may have agreed to the defense request to move the trial forward because any such trade would be unlikely prior to a conviction for Gershkovich.

Russia has maintained that discussions about trades "can only be discussed after the trial is over," Brian D. Taylor, a political science professor at Syracuse University, who serves as director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, told ABC News.

"So the quicker the trial and the inevitable verdict, the quicker they can offer Evan as a piece in a possible trade," Taylor said.

Miller, of the State Department, said in June that the U.S. continued to negotiate for Whelan's and Gershkovich's releases in private discussions, including putting a "significant" offer on the table months earlier.

"We shouldn't have to do that. They should both be released immediately, but we will continue our efforts," he said. "Those have been happening before Evan's trial, they will continue during the trial. And should he be convicted -- which, of course, he will be, it's not a free trial -- they will continue after the trial. But we want to see him returned home immediately."

ABC News' Mike Levine, Will Gretsky, Joe Simonetti and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.