in a significant blow Wall Street Journal reporter Evan gershkovich will stand trial on Espionage charges in Russia Kremlin prosecutors today finalized his indictment and for the first time publicly accused gershkovich of working with the CIA the New Jersey native was arrested in March 2023 and has been wrongfully detained in Russia for more than a year gershkovich the US state department and the Wall Street Journal have vehemently denied the charges today the journal said the reporter is facing a quote false and baseless charge and a sham trial Paul Beckett is assistant editor at the Wall Street Journal and he joins me now from Washington DC Paul appreciate your time on a day like this uh the journal put out a statement that this was expected but no less disappointing how did we get here Evan has been in a free trial detention prison in Moscow for 14 months this is the first movement that we have seen in all that time and unfortunately um the movement is not that he's coming home it's that he is proceeding to trial on this baseless charge what's the reaction been like from you his colleagues friends and family it was a moment we'd hoped to avoid uh with the successful negotiation by the US and Russian governments to secure his release uh it does not stop that process um as you can see I'm up on Capitol Hill I was just a hearing of the foreign house foreign Affairs committee and the chief hostage negotiator Roger Carson said that this would not stop or sto uh their efforts so that was encouraging and you know if anything we hope it might add some urgencies urgency to those negotiations so that he can come home yeah I was monitoring that hearing there with Roger Carson's do you get the sense that a swap of some type is still on the table or how much of a setback is this in terms of negotiations we've don't see that much into it obviously it's very classified it's not something the journal's directly engaged in it's done by governments but we've seen over the last really seven or eight months you know various moments where uh we thought a swap might be possible um didn't turn out to be the case and we know the government is working on it uh so we see activity it's just unclear toward us how much progress the Kremlin did say that that nothing would happen until a verdict uh came down we have that verdict what can you tell us Paul in in leading the coverage of this about what a typical process might look like and whether or not Evan will have any type of due process it's still pretty vague it's vague we didn't learn today when he might be moved we didn't learn when a trial would start we didn't learn how long a trial might go on for so you know if it just may be a while and it's very unclear to us if he goes to trial we expect him to be convicted I think that's probably the best way to answer your uh question on the defense it won't be a defense as you or I know it um really in these cases in Russia the conviction rate is uh unanimous so um that's what we expect as to come out of this process but uh once again and very vly it's absolutely baseless he is not a spy and he works for the Wall Street Journal if convict did Paul what type of sentence might he face up to 20 years it's significant then that the Kremlin for the first time accused him of working for the CIA what does that say to you about where this uh trial is headed uh it tells us how extraordinary manipulated this has been to serve the kremlin's ends of stifling freedom of the press in Russia and trying to gain leverage over the United States uh when you look at the details today it just becomes even more crystal clear that this is not about anything that Evan did it's about um the kremlin's calculations Visa the United States Paul Beckett is the assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal and joins us from DC Paul thank you so much thank you and thanks for all the support we really appreciate [Music]