A Moscow court said on Tuesday that US journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is in jail, would stay in pre-trial detention until March 30 at least, meaning he will be behind bars in a Russian jail for at least a year. Russian prosecutors accused Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, of espionage — the first criminal charge like this against a Western reporter in Russia since the Soviet Union fell. Gershkovich, his employers and the White House all deny the charges, which have a maximum sentence of 20 years.

The Moscow courts service said in a statement on Tuesday after a hearing at the Moscow City Court that “Gershkovich will stay in custody until March 30, 2024.” The appeal was a technical challenge to an earlier decision to make Gershkovich’s pre-trial detention longer. It did not deal with the case itself. FSB counterintelligence agents arrested Gershkovich in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg last March while he was on a reporting trip, which made Washington angry. The United States has criticized the Kremlin for keeping him in detention, which will reach one year on March 29. US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy, who was at the hearing, said outside the court on Tuesday that “The charges against Evan are baseless. The Russian government has locked Evan up just for reporting news.” President Vladimir Putin said this month that he wanted Gershkovich to be freed as part of a prisoner swap. He told conservative American TV commentator Tucker Carlson that Russia and the United States were talking about a possible exchange.

The Russian leader said he wanted any deal to free a Russian who is in jail in Germany for killing a Chechen dissident. Washington has said Moscow arrests American citizens on baseless charges to use them as “bargaining chips” to free Russians who are convicted abroad. Paul Whelan, a former US marine who has been in prison in Russia since 2018 and has a 16-year sentence for espionage charges, also wants to be in any future prisoner swap. Tracy said, “The United States will not rest until Evan and Paul are free and back home in the United States with their families.” On Tuesday, Russia’s FSB security service said it arrested a 33-year-old woman who is a US-Russian citizen in Yekaterinburg — the same city where Gershkovich was arrested — for treason. It said the woman, who lives in Los Angeles, helped Ukrainian groups collect funds “to buy tactical medical items, equipment, means of destruction and ammunition for the Ukrainian armed forces”. The FSB said she acted “against the security of our country” and supported the Ukrainian army while in the United States. Treason can lead to life in prison under laws that got tougher since Russia started its military attack on Ukraine.

The supreme court of Russia’s Tatarstan region also said no to an appeal on Tuesday by US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who is in jail, to go from pre-trial detention to house arrest, her employers said. Kurmasheva, an editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) who lives in Prague, had her passports taken and was arrested in October when she was back in Russia for a family emergency. Her employers say she faces charges of not registering as a “foreign agent” and breaking Russia’s strict military censorship laws. RFE/RL said on Tuesday that the Tatarstan Supreme Court said she had to stay in jail until at least April 4, saying no to an appeal on health grounds that asked for her to go to house arrest.