The Russian judge who sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has stated that the trial was brief because it did not review any "material evidence." Judge Andrei Mineyev remarked that the verdict was reached quickly due to his typing speed.
Mineyev, speaking at a conference in Ekaterinburg, noted, “The case itself was small. I don’t remember how many folders there were—three or five.” He explained that the trial proceeded quickly because neither the prosecution nor the defense requested any material evidence to be examined.
Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 during a reporting trip in Ekaterinburg. He is the first foreign journalist to be charged with espionage in post-Soviet Russia. Both Gershkovich and his employer, along with the U.S. government, have denied the espionage allegations. His trial, which started in June 2024, was widely criticized as a sham.
Prosecutors accused the 32-year-old Gershkovich, whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, of gathering secret information about a large tank factory in the region. The trial was held behind closed doors, a standard practice in espionage cases, and concluded unusually quickly.
On July 19, Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but he was released two weeks later in a significant prisoner swap between Russia and the West, marking the largest exchange since the Cold War. During the trial, the judge reportedly expressed that he was “100-200%” certain Gershkovich was “at the same time a journalist, a spy and a CIA agent.” He stated that he took only a few hours to deliberate on the verdict, emphasizing his ability to type quickly as the reason for the fast turnaround.
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