(Reuters) -American ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy was granted access on Monday to jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the U.S. State Department said, in the second such visit since his pre-trial detention in March on espionage charges he denies.
Tracy met with Gershkovich at Lefortovo Prison in Moscow in what was the first time U.S. Embassy officials were granted consular access since April 17, a State Department spokesperson.
“Ambassador Tracy reports that Mr. Gershkovich is in good health and remains strong, despite his circumstances,” the spokesperson added. “We expect Russian authorities to provide continued consular access.”
A Russian judge on June 22 rejected an application for Gershkovich, 31, to be released from prison while awaiting trial. Tracy after that decision accused Russia of conducting “hostage diplomacy.”
Russia has said Gershkovich was caught trying to obtain military secrets while on a trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, but has provided no details supporting that assertion. The Wall Street Journal denies the allegations.
The State Department repeated the U.S. view that Gershkovich is wrongfully detained and it described the charges against him baseless. It called for the immediate release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony on espionage charges.
The State Department also described Whelan, who was detained in Moscow in 2018, as “wrongfully detained.”
Tracy’s meeting with Gershkovich was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point in more than six decades following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has agreed in the past to high-profile prisoner exchanges with the United States, most recently last year when American basketball star Brittney Griner, sentenced in Russia on a drug charge, was exchanged for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trafficker convicted in the United States.
Russia has said there could be no exchange in Gershkovich’s case until a verdict is reached in his case. No date has so far been announced for his trial.
(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Will Dunham and Grant McCool)
