Wall Street Journal reporter faces ‘false and baseless charge’ and ‘sham trial’, say paper’s publisher and editor in chief

Russian authorities have indicated that the jailed American reporter Evan Gershkovich will soon stand trial in Ekaterinburg more than a year after his arrest on espionage charges that he, his employer, and the White House have decried as politically motivated.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison since last March in the highest-profile arrest of an American journalist in Russia since the cold war.