The espionage trial in Russia of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will begin on June 26 and will be held behind closed doors, a statement from the court that will hear the case said Monday.
Gershkovich, a US citizen, 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 kilometers (870 miles) to the west.
The court said trial will be closed to the public, as is usual in espionage cases.
Gershkovich, 32, 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.
The reporter, his employer and the US government have denied the allegations, and Washington designated him as wrongfully detained.
Russia's Federal Security Service alleged that Gershkovich was acting on US orders to collect state secrets but provided no evidence to back up the accusations.
"Evan has done nothing wrong. He should never have been arrested in the first place. Journalism is not a crime," US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last week. "The charges against him are false. And the Russian government knows that they're false. He should be released immediately."
The Biden administration has sought to negotiate Gershkovich's release, but Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider a prisoner swap only after a trial verdict.
Uralvagonzavod, a state tank and railroad car factory in the city of Nizhny Tagil, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Yekaterinburg, became known in 2011-12 as a bedrock of support for President Vladimir Putin.
Plant foreman Igor Kholmanskih appeared on Putin's annual phone-in program in December 2011 and denounced mass protests occurring in Moscow at the time as a threat to "stability," proposing that he and his colleagues travel to the Russian capital to help suppress the unrest. A week later, Putin appointed Kholmanskikh to be his envoy in the region.
