UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister blamed American journalists Wednesday for helping delay talks with his U.S. counterparts about a possible prisoner exchange involving imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
A day before Gershkovich is scheduled to appear in court on espionage charges, Sergey Lavrov told a U.N. news conference that confidential negotiations are still “ongoing.”
Gershkovich, the Journal and the U.S. vehemently deny the allegations against him and denounce the trial as a sham and illegitimate.
On March 29, 2023, Gershkovich was arrested while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains. He is charged with espionage, but Russian authorities have not offered any evidence that he was gathering secret information for the United States.
