Russia says open to prisoner swap with the US
Russia on Wednesday said it was waiting for the United States to respond to its proposals for a prisoner swap, a week before reporter Evan Gershkovich was set to face trial. "The ball is in the court of the United States, we are waiting for them to respond to the ideas that were presented to them," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state media in an interview. Gershkovich, a US citizen and a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, has been behind bars since his March 2023 arrest and faces 20 years in prison if convicted. The trial is to be held in the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city, where he was arrested.  Gershkovich has since been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, about 1,400 kilometres to the west. The court said the trial would be closed to the public, as is usual in espionage cases. Gershkovich is accused of “gathering secret information” on orders from the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility that produces and repairs military equipment, the Prosecutor General’s office said last week in the first details of the accusations against him. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he believes a deal could be reached to free Gershkovich, hinting he would be open to swapping him for a Russian national imprisoned in Germany.  That appeared to be Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence for the 2019 killing in Berlin of a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent. (Agencies)