Russia to Start Secret Trial of U.S. Reporter Accused of Espionage

In his 15 months in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, Evan Gershkovich has plowed through Russian literary classics like “War and Peace,” and played slow-moving chess by mail with his father in the United States. He tries to keep himself in shape during the hourlong exercise period he is permitted each day.

Friends who correspond with him describe Mr. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, as positive, strong and rarely discouraged, despite facing the official wrath of President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. He is scheduled go on trial Wednesday, facing up to 20 years in prison on an espionage charge that he, his employer and the U.S. State Department vehemently deny.

“He may have ups and downs like everyone else, but he remains confident in himself, in his rightness,” said Maria Borzunova, a Russian journalist. She is among a small group of Mr. Gershkovich’s friends who have organized the herculean task of taking thousands of letters from well-wishers and translating them into Russian, to smooth their approval by prison censors.

At the heart of Mr. Gershkovich’s ordeal is a void — the absence of any evidence made public by the Russian authorities to support their claim that he was a spy. Nor is any likely to emerge from his trial in Yekaterinburg, which has been declared secret, with any observers barred from attending, and his lawyers prohibited from publicly revealing anything they learn.

“We think that it is a sham trial based on fake charges, therefore the proceedings will be farcical,” Almar Latour, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said in an interview. It is impossible to predict how a trial will affect efforts to obtain Mr. Gershkovich’s release, he added.

In Russian trials, conviction is largely a foregone conclusion, especially when — as in this case — the Kremlin has weighed in. The judge hearing the case has boasted to a local news outlet that in a career spanning decades, he has acquitted just four defendants.